“What If…The French Had Won Cinco de Mayo”
By Benjamin Ortiz, for Café Latino Lifestyle Magazine
May/June 2009
IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSEÂ…
The United League of Latin American Nations welcomes you to the 47th celebration of Le Cinq Mai, our hemispheric observance of the coming of the French to the Americas and the rise of Imperial Mexico!
From the Arctic Circle to French loyalist strongholds in Chiapas, from cafes lining le centre historique where old Indian women drink café au lait a la Charlotte, to the expatriate bars where the children of the warriors of May 5 reminisce, cries of “VIVE LE CINQ MAI!” ring out with toasts of cheap Chardonnay and warmed-over escargots served like elotes.
Descendants of Austrian and Hungarian Hussars, Belgian troops, French Foreign Legionnaires, and Egyptian and Sudanese conscripts gather at the bistros to regale each other with toasts to their long-passed forbears, the heroes of that long-ago battle that helped turn Mexico into a Euro-Indian nation, a force to be reckoned with in the Western hemisphere.
Along the avenues leading to le Zócalo d’Mexique and le Palais Impériale, little children set fire and explode Judases in the likeness of Benito Juárez to celebrate the triumph of Emperor Maximilian, while upper-class art patrons enjoy the traveling exhibit of “Manet and the Execution by Guillotine of Juárez” at le Palais des Beaux-Arts.
Indeed, the entire North American Union – Canada, Mexico, the United States and the Caribbean – celebrates the victory of French Imperial Mexico that led to a lasting international coalition. Even the United States, its dreams of Manifest Destiny long forgotten, now celebrates Le Cinq Mai as the event that put the Americas on the path to multinational unity, trading now in euros bearing the faces of Maximilian, Napoleon III and Charles de Gaulle.
Across the Parisian-style boulevards of the capital city, the French tricolor flag comes up for one day, as The Marseillaise rings out of every window and drunken murmurs of “TODOS SOMOS FRANCESES” (We are all French) echo well past midnight……..
What if the French had won at Puebla on May 5, 1862? What if they had succeeded in creating a French client state for longer than a few years in Mexico? What if they had stayed and effectively challenged the expansion of the United States?
And what would have happened to Cinco de Mayo celebrations, both in Mexico and north of the border? Would the popular and historically incorrect celebration of Mexican military prowess now get toasted with fine wine?
A PROUD SYMBOL
According to the media, popular lore and academic opinion, Cinco de Mayo is bigger in some Chicago suburbs than most of Mexico. Even local grocery stores have been marketing it since the 1980s. It’s a big, mainstream event brought to you by every tortilla chip and cerveza company you can name – driven largely by the influx of Mexican immigrants to the United States.
Of course, Mexico remembers it too, as it became a symbol of the defeat of the well-armed foreign colonizer with only a handful of Zapotec Indians and mestizos. “The triumph was used to galvanize Mexican national identity at a time when the nation was fractured and divided regionally and ideologically,” says Dina Berger, assistant professor of modern Latin American history at Loyola University Chicago. “In the United States, however, you could poll those enjoying Corona specials on Cinco de Mayo, and most would claim the holiday stood for Mexican independence.”
Mexico gained independence from Spain by 1821, but endemic political and economic instability had it in perpetual chaos. In order to recover, the republican government of Benito Juárez suspended payments to foreign debtors, and so in October 1862, France, Spain and England agreed to compel Mexico by military force to repay debts.
The subsequent Battle of Puebla that year was a rare Mexican victory. The French proceeded to expel Juárez from the capital and secure almost a third of Mexico under a Second Empire, with the archduke of Austria, Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor with his wife, Carlota of Belgium.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that Max faced the same central challenge that every previous government had: how to forge political and cultural hegemony in Mexico? Spain and England withdrew from Mexico almost immediately, and Max ended up alienating both conservative and republican factions. Napoleon III eventually withdrew costly French troops as the United States came out of its Civil War and started to pressure France to withdraw completely.
Max had a last stand against Juárez with his remaining Austrian hussars and untrained Mexican conscripts, but he was defeated and later executed by firing squad on June 19, 1867.
A REVISIONIST VIEW
In her book “Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), Michele Cunningham, visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia, argues for a revisionist view of Napoleon III’s interests in Mexico.
Typical interpretations suggest that Napoleon III was really interested in Mexican silver, cotton and other markets, and in establishing a Latin bloc of Catholic nations to check the United States.
Cunningham argues in her book that Napoleon had “a broader vision” than just grabbing more power for France: “Mexico provided an opportunity for Napoleon III to extend his vision for maintaining peace beyond Europe, to embrace the world.” In this account, he wanted to secure free trade as the basis for global prosperity. Cunningham argues that “this would have resulted in a European code and court of appeals, uniform coins, weights and measures, and eventually national interests would have given way to European interests.”
Cunningham confirms these ideas in an e-mail interview. “Maximilian was meant to develop his own army and eventually reduce reliance on France, but he proved to be totally inept … Whether or not a good monarchy would have brought stability to Mexico is one of the great imponderables,” she says.
“Certainly, Maximilian’s execution and the new republican government didn’t bring political stability, and even today the country still has massive problems. One thing that is certain is that the United States would not countenance a monarchy in the Americas.”
What if NapoleonÂ’s intentions had been realized and Max had succeeded in consolidating the factions in Mexico, creating his own army and eventually bringing a Pax Maximiliano to the country?
“Had [Napoleon’s] contemporaries been less conservative and shared his vision,” Cunningham argues, “it is possible that some of the problems in international relations arising in the 20th century might have been avoided.”
In reality, says Paul Edison, history department chairman at the University of Texas-El Paso, “[The intervention] galvanized Mexican nationalism and made it easier for Mexico to overcome longstanding internal political divisions.”
And of course, in the United States, the real significance of Cinco de Mayo is that it has helped spread a sense of North American Mexicanidad, from Chicano Movement protests to pro-immigrant rallies.
SIDEBAR
THE FRENCH INFLUENCE
In the book “Food Culture in Mexico” (Greenwood Press, 2005), authors Janet Long-Solis and Luis Alberto Vargas suggest that French cuisine showed up on Mexican tables in the 18th century: “… the habits of the aristocracy in New Spain took on a French veneer, and French-style garden parties and picnics became popular.”
Though haute cuisine never really trickled down to the masses, you can stroll the Paseo de La Reforma in Mexico City, or walk through the National Palace of Fine Arts and along the Alameda, and you’re taking in the splendor of Maximilian’s imperial Mexico. Dina Berger, assistant professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, says Max modeled the Paseo after the Champs-Élysées.
“By the time of the Porfiriato [the 35-year regime of President Porfirio Diaz],” Berger says, “French cuisine, fashion and architecture were aplenty in the capital.” Diaz’s modernist vision drove the construction of a Parisian capital city and the proliferation of French affectations.
Paul Edison, chairman of the University of Texas-El Paso history department, argues that the French influence was deep and lasting: “The sustained presence of French officers, engineers, doctors and administrators [during the Intervention] had a profound impact on the practice of science, higher education and government in Mexico. For example, French and Mexican doctors together founded Mexico’s National Academy of Medicine in 1864, an institution that continues today.”
In an issue titled “México-Francia, Fascinaciones Mutuas,” the Mexico City journal Artes de México explored parallel aesthetics that link the two countries. The editorial in that issue sums up the broad connections: “Indeed, the very concept of Latin America is a French innovation which we have appropriated. Our Latin roots at once unite Mexico to France, and demonstrate the attractive differences between us.”
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