Celebrating 5th of May, Ole!

by Briana Young

May 7, 2008

IF you’ve never heard of a reason to celebrate May 5, then you are probably a typical Australian.

If, however, you spent Monday night sporting a sombrero and downing tequila, then you were probably celebrating the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo, Spanish for the fifth of May, celebrates the day when Mexican forces defeated French forces in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. France occupied Mexico a year later, but who’s counting?

While rarely celebrated in the rest of Mexico, it’s taken on a life of its own in places like the United States, which has a high Mexican population.

Rose Tauke, an exchange student from Chicago, has celebrated Cinco de Mayo for the past five years.

“We usually drink Coronas outside and eat Mexican food, basically we just get drunk,” she said. “It’s not a huge thing, but it depends what state you’re in.”

“Places like Texas that are closer to the border generally have bigger celebrations.”

Rose admitted she only found out the reason behind Cinco de Mayo a few days ago.

So don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it yet, with only a few Mexican places in the city holding special events, and some not celebrating the holiday at all.

Nick Izanoss, the manager at Zapatas, a Mexican restaurant in Fremantle, explained they didn’t have any special events for Cinco de Mayo.

“The reason is we’ve done events before and they haven’t gone that well,” he said.  “From a business sense, the return doesn’t work out.”

There are 16,000kms between Perth and Puebla and, according to the 2006 census, just over a thousand Central Americans living in Perth. This probably contributes to the relative obscurity of the holiday in WA.