May 5, 2008 5:39 am US/Pacific
Southlanders Gear Up For Cinco De Mayo
LOS ANGELES
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A girl dances the La Madrugada during a Cinco de Mayo celebration in downtown Los Angeles. (File)
AP
Cinco de Mayo, an event that commemorates a Mexican victory over the French in 1862 and has been annually celebrated in California since 1863, will be observed in Watts, South Los Angeles, Long Beach and at Dodger Stadium on Monday.
The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks will conclude a series of events related to Cinco de Mayo by holding a music appreciation program at 3 p.m. at Harvard Recreation Center, 1535 W. 62nd St., in South Los Angeles. The event will also feature international foods, Spanish dancers and music at Jordan Downs Recreation Center, 9900 Grape St., in Watts.
An alcohol-free "Cinco de Mayo with Pride" celebration with free taco plates for the first 400 arrivals will start at 5 p.m. at Ernest McBride Senior Park, 1550 Martin Luther King Ave., in Long Beach.
At Dodger Stadium, the Los Angeles Dodgers will commemorate Cinco de Mayo having live Mariachi music played outside the turnstiles at the Top of the Park, the Loge Terrace and between the Right and Left Field Pavilions. The Dodgers will play the New York Mets.
Traditional ranchera music will also be part of the in-game entertainment. Comedian Paul Rodriguez will throw out the ceremonial first pitch.
Cinco de Mayo marks the victory of a ragtag 4,500-strong militia under the command of Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza over a larger, well-equipped French expeditionary force at the original Battle of Puebla on March 5, 1862.
Cinco de Mayo celebrations started "by Latinos living in California during the Civil War around issues of freedom and democracy," according to David E. Hayes-Bautista, the director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture.
Mexico's victory came at a time when "'it looked as if freedom and democracy was just about going to be a thing of the past in the North American land mass" because of the Union's struggles in the Civil War and the French invasion of Mexico, Hayes-Bautista said.
California's Latinos established a series of organizations to raise funds to bolster the Mexican and Union causes and for President Abraham Lincoln's re-election campaign to thwart the Democratic Party's attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with the Confederates, Hayes-Bautista said.
"Every fifth of May was their signature fundraising event, commemorating the original Battle of Puebla," said Hayes-Bautista, who co-authored a 2007 paper titled "'Cinco de Mayo's First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, from 1862 to 1937.
"'Their contributions almost tripled in the month of May every year," he said.
In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo "is the biggest nothing, because it's not a Mexican holiday," Hayes-Bautista said.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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