Sunset Park parade marks Mexican roots and resilience

More than a century and a half after Mexican soldiers defeated French troops in the Battle of Puebla, another battle is being waged in the streets of Sunset Park.

For many Mexicans, it is a battle for remembrance and reconnection with their roots after living in the United States for decades. For many others, it is a battle to recover the day’s original meaning and claim respect for a culture that many Mexicans live and represent in New York City.

This week, Sunset Park will host multiple celebrations tied to Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day. On Sunday, May 10, a parade organized by the Comité de las Fiestas Patrias is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue and continue along Fifth Avenue. That same day, Brooklyn Army Terminal will host a free Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day celebration from 2 to 8 p.m. at the West Lot and Ferry Plaza Park, with live music, dance and family activities. The week’s celebrations began Sunday, May 3, when the Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day parade took place on Fifth Avenue.

Sebastian Rosas, a poblano (the demonym for someone from Puebla, Mexico) living in Staten Island, said Cinco de Mayo is “important to celebrate so that we don’t forget our roots, ourselves, where we come from. That is essential. It is the most important thing for me: that I don’t forget where I come from.”

Rosas spoke on 59th Street on May 3 as he waited by his vehicle for the Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day parade to begin.

Andrea Godinez, a Sunset Park resident and member of Voces Ciudadanas, a local organization fighting for immigrants’ rights, shared that “we must keep in mind that wherever we go, we remain poblanos and, above all, we remain Mexican.”

Andrea Godinez, a Sunset Park resident, celebrated twice on May 3: as a poblana and as a mother. Photo by Leonardo March.

The parade, co-organized by Edgar Álvarez, started at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue and continued to 44th Street. The parade marked its 10th anniversary, and its theme this year was “United by the same battle,” Álvarez said.

Origins of the day

In 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez suspended payments on foreign debt, which prompted France, along with other European powers, to launch a campaign to recover the debt. One year later, France, under Napoleon III, invaded Mexico, triggering the Second French Intervention in Mexico, which lasted until 1867.

French forces’ path toward control of the Mexican capital passed through Puebla after they arrived in Mexico in January 1862. In May, Ignacio Zaragoza and Porfirio Díaz led Mexico’s army to defeat the invading forces on May 5, 1862. This victory delayed the French campaign for more than a year and gave the defenders a sense of national unity and pride.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates that victory. It is celebrated mainly in Puebla, Mexico, and among poblanos abroad. Yet the symbolism of that victory was later adopted by the Chicano movement in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.

This sense of triumph, of an underdog army defeating a powerful enemy, is what inspired the Chicano movement in California to adopt Cinco de Mayo as a day to celebrate Mexican American pride.

“That is basically the position that Chicanos feel in American society,” according to Dr. Alejandro Quintana. “‘We are marginalized, we are discriminated against. But we have pride, we have a heroic history,’” added the associate professor of history at St. John’s University.

Chicano culture embraced the day throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as it provided Chicanos on the West Coast with a sense of dignity within the broader civil rights movement of the era.

But as the celebrations became more mainstream, some Mexican companies started to market their products in connection with the holiday.

“And it’s in the 1980s when Corona begins to capitalize on this celebration as a way to introduce Mexican beer to the American market,” explained Dr. Quintana. “‘Wow, look, Mexicans celebrate,’ and they start with that. And then José Cuervo comes in with tequila, and now it’s beer and tequila.”

Decades later, many Americans associate the holiday with partying and drinking or mistakenly believe it is Mexico’s Independence Day. Hence, the battle continues.

Benito Bravo, one of the organizers of the May 10 parade and director of Ballet Folklórico Quetzalcóatl in Sunset Park, shared via phone that the Mexican community is still “battling with people who still do not accept that the Mexican community is present here and that we are free to celebrate and hold our events to showcase our culture, our traditions, and to make people aware of what it truly means to take pride in being Mexican.”