Cinco de Mayo has more S.A. ties than you think
It’s easy to criticize, even condemn, celebrations leading up to Sunday’s Cinco de Mayo.
Beer companies happily peddle their products and revelers chug, but few events recognize the day’s historical significance.
It’s important — not only to Mexico but to Texas and the rest of the United States.
It was May 5, 1862. In the Battle of Puebla, Mexican Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza defeated Napoleon III of France, an ally of the Confederate cause, including a Confederate Texas.
Years ago, for another Cinco de Mayo story, an official with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma Mexico-san Antonio suggested that had Mexico lost, we’d be speaking French.
Nombre.
Texas historian and archivist Thomas H. Kreneck, who lives in San Antonio and Kenedy, didn’t say that.
But Kreneck, who worked at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center and headed special collections and archives at Texas A&m-corpus Christi, knows Zaragoza’s contributions deserve more recognition. His book on Zaragoza is on the horizon.
Kreneck is emphatic when he says, “Zaragoza was a Texan. He was an early Tejano.”
Others consider Zaragoza the nation’s first historical Chicano hero, and he certainly was a figure critical to the Union cause.
At the time, France sought to expand its influence in Mexico and the United States.
Kreneck said the Union knew it would benefit from a Mexican victory against the French.
Zaragoza’s triumph stalled the Confederacy.
“It’s all the more reason to honor Zaragoza and Cinco de Mayo, especially since he was born in what is now Goliad.”
There is now a Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site there.
In 1829, it was known as el Presidio de Bahía del Espíritu Santo in the state of Coahuila y Tejas. Its residents followed Zaragoza’s military career, fully aware he was a local warrior.
His San Antonio connections were clear, too. Zaragoza was related to the Seguíns, a prominent San Antonio family.
His mother was María de Jesús Seguín from San Antonio de Béxar, a distant cousin of Juan Seguín of the Texas Revolution, specifically the Battle of San Jacinto.
Though the family ended up in Monterrey, Kreneck said Zaragoza’s mother never lost contact with her family in San Antonio.
A year after Puebla, Kreneck found a citation that Zaragoza’s mother traveled to San Antonio for a baptism. Her first son, Miguel, married a San Antonio woman and was living here by 1859.
“Of course, they were following events in Mexico and, of course, they celebrated the victory,” Kreneck said.
Seguín relatives as far away as Floresville likely followed news coverage of the battle, and news traveled quickly despite the tensions with local Anglos, who were pro-confederate, as were local newspapers.
“The problem was Texas. It was a Confederate state,” Kreneck said. “Officials were pulling for the French. Local newspapers were keeping quiet about (Zaragoza’s) victory.”
Like so many San Antonio Mexican Americans who maintain familial and cultural ties to places like Monterrey, Maria Seguín was part of similar crossborder families of transfronterizos.
Blandina Cardenas, a retired educator and university president who attended one of Kreneck’s talks, said his descriptions of “so much living going on in Coahuila y Tejas, so much going back and forth” were fascinating.
Cardenas lamented “all that was erased in Texas history and in a sense from our conscious vision of the true history of our land.”
It’s a modern refrain. That’s why Zaragoza’s history is critical to future Cinco de Mayo celebrations that ought to focus on his legacy and all this history.
Celebrations around him began immediately after Puebla, his hero status covered by some U.S. newspapers.
San Antonians came to understand how important his legacy was.
In Mexico, his status became more pronounced.
Mexicans remember his famous letter to President Benito Juárez, which captured the battle’s success.
“Las armas nacionales se han cubierto de gloria.” The arms of the nation have been covered with glory.
He received a conqueror’s welcome in Mexico City, but the euphoria was short-lived. He died of typhoid fever four months later and received a state funeral.
Juárez also changed the name of Puebla to Puebla de Zaragoza, and Cinco de Mayo became a national holiday, though only parts of Mexico continue to celebrate it.
Zaragoza’s handsome face was once on a 500 Mexican peso.
Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Texas took different approaches — from a three-day celebration in Victoria with a brass band and string orchestra to an annual caravan of San Antonians who in the late ’50s and early 60s traveled together to Goliad on Cinco de Mayo, Kreneck said.
Bertha Flores de Terrazas, who was part of a prominent San Antonio family, led the caravan effort. In the ’40s, she established a school called the Centro Cultural Infantil for young children on the West Side.
Kreneck wants desperately to learn more about her.
Because he considers that celebration, a day trip to Goliad, as the first of the modern Cinco de Mayo commemorations movement.
That’s the kind of celebration that deserves resurrection. My trusty Toyota will be ready.