Chilingo

While many Americans were celebrating Cinco de Mayo yesterday, I would bet that if you ask most Mexicans about this week’s holiday, they would tell you it’s Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is celebrated May 10th here, regardless of what day it is (as opposed to how in the USA Mother’s Day is always celebrated on a Sunday.) It happens to fall on the same day this year as it does in the United States.

But it’s a much bigger deal here than there. It has something to do with Mexicans’ view of motherhood. I read an article in Vivir Mexico last September (El Culto de La Madre), and I posted some of a translation of that article on my family’s blog (Motherhood in Mexico).

Mothers’ Day is practically a national holiday…

To be a bad mother is the worst possible thing in Mexican society. Bad mothers are the villains of every story…

The child who abandons his mother deserves less than the devil himself, especially if the mother is elderly…

So, forget Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day is the REAL holiday this week in Mexico.

(Image by: Big Grey Mare on flickr)

Are there even celebrations of Cinco de Mayo in Mexico City? If so, I haven’t heard about them. The swine flu would make it a little complicated this year anyway. I know for sure that it is more of a regional holiday than anything. It’s not a national holiday or the celebration of Mexican Independence Day.

I read a great post from National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog about the history of 5 de Mayo.

In Mexico today, Cinco de Mayo is primarily a regional holiday marked in Puebla, though some re-enactments of the battle, period costumes and all, take place in Mexico City as well. In the U.S., some see Cinco de Mayo as the Mexican, or, more accurately, Chicano St. Patrick’s Day. While Irish Americans celebrate St. Patrick, German Americans have their Oktoberfest, and Chinese Americans have Chinese New Year, Chicanos and Latinos from other countries see Cinco de Mayo as a celebration of Latino resilience and pride. Cinco de Mayo is not just a day of festivities for Latinos but for all Americans interested in the history of Mexico, Mexican culture and identity in the U.S., good food and drink, mariachi music, and folk dances.

Chicano students first celebrated the holiday in 1967 at Cal State University. Since the 1980s, Cinco de Mayo has been increasingly commercialized and become less about pride and self-determination and more about drinking Mexican beer.

Read the rest of the post here.

If you’re interested, check out a video of a trip we took to Puebla back in 2005..