May 5th is Cinco de Mayo or fifth of May. Not a big holiday in Mexico but bigger in the US, helped along by good old American capitalism. No it is not Mexican Independence Day, that’s Sept. 16th 1810, but it celebrates the Mexican Army’s defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. They lost the war militarily (an intervention over debt collection and “free trade”) but winning at Puebla was a moral booster. France left Mexico and in 1867 Maximilian I was executed and the Mexican Republic was reestablished. So basically a celebration of North Americans defeating Europeans. Most Americans are on board with that.