VIVA! el Cinco de Mayo!!!!

May 5, 2008

Cinco de Mayo loosely translates to The Fifth of May.


Today is Cinco de Mayo! I am not completely sure what this holiday is so the House Mouse is going to look on the internet and tell us, that would be me and my horse, what it is. All we know now is that the boy in the next town requested cheese and his sister wanted a flower. Seems sort of funny to us so we will wait to hear from the House Mouse as to why the human girl worked so hard around here today making everything look so nice. She even combed our hair and she put a blue halter on me. Blue!!!!!! I’m a girl horse but she put a blue halter on me. My horse thinks it might have something to do with the holiday.

OK here’s what the House Mouse found at a web site originating in San Marcos Texas who’s address is http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm She says to tell you that this is just part of what is on the web site that this is the part that makes Cinco de Mayo important to us horse’s. She also said that she is putting all this on here for us to read without getting permission from the people in San Marcos so if you go to their web site you give them a big ole Texas Thank YOU!…..

………………….(that means that there were words that came before this but house mouse isn’t going to type them)…….The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, as the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy -- as European countries traditionally did.
Under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa, (and the cavalry under the command of Colonel Porfirio Diaz, later to be Mexico's president and dictator), the Mexicans awaited. Brightly dressed French Dragoons led the enemy columns. The Mexican Army was less stylish.
General Zaragosa ordered Colonel Diaz to take his cavalry, the best in the world, out to the French flanks. In response, the French did a most stupid thing; they sent their cavalry off to chase Diaz and his men, who proceeded to butcher them. The remaining French infantrymen charged the Mexican defenders through sloppy mud from a thunderstorm and through hundreds of head of stampeding cattle stirred up by Indians armed only with machetes.
When the battle was over, many French were killed or wounded and their cavalry was being chased by Diaz' superb horsemen miles away. The Mexicans had won a great victory that kept Napoleon III from supplying the confederate rebels for another year, allowing the United States to build the greatest army the world had ever seen. This grand army smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg just 14 months after the battle of Puebla, essentially ending the Civil War.
Union forces were then rushed to the Texas/Mexican border under General Phil Sheridan, who made sure that the Mexicans got all the weapons and ammunition they needed to expel the French. American soldiers were discharged with their uniforms and rifles if they promised to join the Mexican Army to fight the French. The American Legion of Honor marched in the Victory Parade in Mexico, City.
It might be a historical stretch to credit the survival of the United States to those brave 4,000 Mexicans who faced an army twice as large in 1862. But who knows?
In gratitude, thousands of Mexicans crossed the border after Pearl Harbor to join the U.S. Armed Forces. As recently as the Persian Gulf War, Mexicans flooded American consulates with phone calls, trying to join up and fight another war for America.
Mexicans, you see, never forget who their friends are, and neither do Americans. That's why Cinco de Mayo is such a party -- A party that celebrates freedom and liberty. There are two ideals which Mexicans and Americans have fought shoulder to shoulder to protect, ever since the 5th of May, 1862. VIVA! el CINCO DE MAYO!!
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