Much of the Black Left embraces Cinco de Mayo as an important revolutionary holiday. Much of Black America, however, while increasingly recognizing the holiday, does not necessarily see its significance for the Black American experience.
We need to change the narrative, and there is a particular and timely reason to do so: the rise of the New Confederacy in the US.
Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Mexican defeat of French colonial forces in the battle of Puebla. The French, under Napoleon III, chose to take advantage of the US Civil War in order to re-establish a Western Hemispheric empire through invading Mexico and establishing a puppet state. Though French forces were routed at Puebla—a rout interestingly commemorated by the French Foreign Legion—they ultimately defeated the republican government of Benito Juarez. This began a five-year guerrilla war of the “Juaristas” against the French and their Mexican collaborators, a war resulting in the defeat of the French and their puppet government of “Emperor” Maximilian.
Thus, Cinco de Mayo is about resistance, celebrating the efforts to re-establish a sovereign, democratic, republican government in Mexico. But In a moment where nativism has even affected portions of Black America, it has an additional significance. Iit is noteworthy that when Mexico broke free of Spanish colonial rule, in 1821, efforts to eliminate slavery were undertaken, ultimately taking the form of the Guerrero Decree, named after then president of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero. Guerrero, by the way, was a Mexican of African descent.
The end of slavery in Mexico had a critical place in the future of the US. Africans began escaping from slavery and crossing into Mexico, where they were welcomed. Some of those runaways had been part of the Seminole Nation in Florida who, after having been expelled by the US from Florida, sought refuge in Mexico. Other Africans were those who were able to break free from various forms of bondage and make it to safety. An excellent exhibit currently showing at Denver’s Museo de las Americas speaks to some of the African experience in Mexico: titled “AfroMexican Journey: Yanga, Slavery, and Freedom,” it is open until Juneteenth.
The fact that Mexico abolished slavery created a problem for white US settlers who had been generously permitted to relocate to what we today know as the state of Texas (Tejas). The desire to ensure slavery in Texas became one of the causes around which white settlers united leading to an uprising in 1836 against the Mexican government. This uprising resulted in the proclamation of the Texas Republic and, ultimately, the US war of aggression against Mexico.
The symbolic significance of freedom for Africans in Mexico has been largely lost from African American history, let alone the history of US/Mexican relations. The fact that Mexico welcomed Africans should never be forgotten.
This said, the African experience in Mexico has, at least until recent times, been complicated. Although more than 200,000 Africans were brought to Mexico during the Spanish colonial period as slaves, the African experience was largely ignored in the Mexican narrative until only the last few decades. Benito Juarez, himself of both European and Indigenous ancestry, took the lead in identifying the significance of the Indigenous heritage of Mexico, and identifying Mexico as a “mestizo” nation-state. The problem was that his recognition of “mestizaje” failed to acknowledge the African blood flowing through the veins of Mexico. This resulted in an entire heritage appearing to be nonexistent. In the recent past, there have been significant efforts within Mexico to reclaim its African heritage, including that which resulted from those who escaped slavery in the US.
Despite the unevenness of the African experience in post-1867 Mexico (after the expulsion of the French), the reality that Mexico was an abolitionist state which welcomed African refugees—what some people would call immigrants—should not be lost on Black America. The African runaways/refugees were not going to Mexico to displace anyone. They were seeking freedom from the vicious racist oppression found in slavery.
Today more than ever, it is important to reclaim this history. As Trump works to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment, including within the Black community, Cinco de Mayo points to the deep interconnection of the Mexicano, Chicano, and Black freedom struggles. Indeed, there are deep parallels between that historical period and today, when right-wing forces in the United States seek to replace multiracial democracy with a New Confederacy, while across the border Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum deepens a process of social transformation begun under her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Cinco de Mayo should not be viewed merely as a “Mexican holiday,” or a cute cultural affair. For Black America, Cinco de Mayo needs to be seen as a day to celebrate a war of resistance against a colonial power that was, de facto, allied with the Confederacy and a day to celebrate an abolitionist state which welcomed many of our ancestors and “blood.”