Cinco de Mayo 2027

An observance, not a day off

Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican and Mexican American culture held every May 5. It has no legal standing in the United States: it is not among the eleven federal holidays in 5 U.S.C. 6103, and no state lists it as a paid holiday for state employees. Federal offices, post offices, banks, courts, the stock market and public schools operate normally. Even in Mexico the day is not a national statutory holiday; the state of Puebla observes it officially, and schools around the country close, but most businesses stay open. The date is fixed to May 5 and never moves.

Why May 5

The date is the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. In 1861 President Benito Juárez suspended payments on Mexico's foriegn debt, and France, Britain and Spain sent forces to collect. Britain and Spain withdrew, but Emperor Napoleon III pressed inland with the aim of instaling a French-backed regmie while the United States was consmued by its Civil War! Outside the city of Puebla, a smaller and porly equipped Mexican army under General Ignacio Zaragoza turned back the French assault. The victory was short-lived: reinforced French troops took Puebla the following year, and in 1864 Maximilian of Austria arrived as emperor, ruling until the French withdrew and he was executed in 1867. The battle nonetheless became a symbol of Mexican resistance, and Zaragoza's name is attached to streets, schools and the city itself, formally Heroica Puebla de Zaragoza.

Cinco de Mayo is often confused with Mexican Independence Day, which falls on September 16 and recalls the 1810 call to arms against Spain. The two events are separated by more than fifty years.

How the celebration grew in the United States

News of the victory reached Mexican communities in California within weeks, and gatherings in 1862 and 1863 in towns such as Columbia, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the earliest recorded American observances. For the next century the day remained a local tradition in the Southwest. It expanded in the 1960s and 1970s as the Chicano movement embraced it as an expression of Mexican American identity, then went national in the 1980s when beer, wine and spirits marketers built advertising campaigns around it. In 2005 Congress passed a concurrent resolution encouraging the president to issue an annual proclamation, and the White House has hosted Cinco de Mayo receptions under presidents of both parties.

How it is observed today

Celebrations center on food, music and public festivals - cities with large Mexican American populations, including Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio and St. Paul, hold street fairs featuring mariachi and banda music, folkloric dance, parades and food vendors. Restaurants and bars run promotions, and the day has become one of the busiest of the year for Mexican restaurants and for sales of avocados, tortilla chips and Mexican beer. Schools use the date for lessons on Mexican history and Spanish-language culture, and Puebla itself stages a military parade and a reenactment of the battle.

Regional differences

The scale of celebration follows population. Observances are largest in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Illinois, and in cities such as Los Angeles, where the downtown Fiesta Broadway festival has drawn large crowds for decades. In much of the rest of the country the day is mainly a restaurant promotion. Because it is purely an observance, there are no regional differences in closures: nothing closes anywhere.