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Cinco De Mayo Marks Victory Over French

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May 5, 2008 11:13 am US/Eastern

Cinco De Mayo Marks Victory Over French

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― Today is Cinco de Mayo, an event that commemorates a Mexican victory over the French in 1862. 

A ragtag 4,500-strong militia under the command of Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a larger, well-equipped French expeditionary force at the original Battle of Puebla on March 5, 1862.

Cinco de Mayo celebrations started "by Latinos living in California during the Civil War around issues of freedom and democracy," according to David E. Hayes-Bautista, the director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture.

Mexico's victory came at a time when "'it looked as if freedom and democracy was just about going to be a thing of the past in the North American land mass" because of the Union's struggles in the Civil War and the French invasion of Mexico, Hayes-Bautista said.

California's Latinos established a series of organizations to raise funds to bolster the Mexican and Union causes and for President Abraham Lincoln's re-election campaign to thwart the Democratic Party's attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with the Confederates, Hayes-Bautista said.

"Every fifth of May was their signature fundraising event, commemorating the original Battle of Puebla," said Hayes-Bautista, who co-authored a 2007 paper titled "'Cinco de Mayo's First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, from 1862 to 1937.

"'Their contributions almost tripled in the month of May every year," he said.

In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo "is the biggest nothing, because it's not a Mexican holiday," Hayes-Bautista said.

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© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.