Mhall46184@aol.com
Cinco de Mayo
When in the middle of the 19th century France decided that the conquest of Mexico would compensate for the loss of its previous North American empire, the Austrian empire provided one of their extra archdukes to serve as a sock-puppet emperor. Both the French and the Austrian governments expected to enrich themselves by looting, exploiting, and taxing Mexicans, a program which anticipated our own Internal Revenue Service.
President Lincoln was opposed to the scheme, not from any love of the Mexican people but from fear of French intervention on the Confederate side in the Civil War. There is a possibility that the Confederacy meant to seize Cuba from the Spanish and create an empire centered on the Gulf of Mexico, a Southern Mare Nostrum. Beyond all this, the Spanish, the English, and the French were already involved in Mexico and the Gulf for their own purposes. And beyond yet all this, Mexico, after years of civil war, was divided, with many considering government by the French better than ongoing violence, starvation, and economic collapse. Some of the quarreling Mexican factions invited France and Archduke Maximilian to Mexico.
In sum, everyone was against everyone.
The French army had not lost a battle in over fifty years (anyone who dismisses the courage, character, and aggressiveness of the French soldier is ignorant of history), and through superior organization, technology, and numbers, and poor intelligence from its spies, assumed that they would be victorious in Mexico.
Marching from Vera Cruz to Mexico City in the spring of 1862, the French were assured by spies and propagandists that the citizens of Puebla de los Angeles would welcome them with flowers.
Instead of flowers, Mexicans welcomed the French army with archaic Brown Bess muskets sold them by the English long before as war surplus. The Mexican victory was wholly unexpected, and the whole French invasion timetable had to be re-set.
The invaders reorganized, and with reinforcements and craftier leadership occupied Mexico City within a year and set the Hapsburg upon his throne for a brief reign that ended before a firing squad in 1867.
The theme of this first Battle of Puebla (there were two others) on the 5th of May, 1862 was that it showed that a poorly-organized but determined Mexican militia and populace could defeat a modern European army. This gave the people hope, and led eventually to their victory over the occupiers in 1867.
Maximilian was a liberal in the old-fashioned sense, and proposed reforms for agricultural laborers and the poor which in the end could not be carried out. Too bad Juarez had him shot instead of employing him; Maximilian had restructured the Austrian navy into a real battle force, and could have done the same for the Mexican navy.
On the fifth of May this year we have important elections in Texas, free elections. Maximilian, a monarchist, disapproved of government of the people, but Benito Juarez, a republican-with-a-small-r, said people should show up and vote for their leaders. He would be disappointed to see that most Texans don’t vote at all. They listen to the a.m. radio boys and complain about their several governing entities, but seem to think that self-government is a spectator sport.
Maximilian would have been okay with that sort of passivity.
We have many reasons to think about Cinco de Mayo this year.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment