Controversy Brews Over ‘Mexican St. Patrick’s Day’

Javier Rico, cocktail in hand, scoffed at the feathered Aztec dancers who brushed by his barstool Sunday afternoon at a restaurant in Universal CityWalk.

“What does that have to do with Cinco de Mayo?” the Pasadena resident said. “This isn’t authentic. In Mexico City, where I’m from, it’s not a big deal. Here, they make a big deal out of it.”

Indeed, Cinco de Mayo was a big deal all over Southern California and nationwide, where the Mexican holiday has caught on like, well, margaritas.

And that’s just the problem, say an increasing number of Mexican Americans, who worry that their fiesta’s American translation gives lip service to history amid gulps of alcohol.

“I think it’s become a commercial event that’s totally devoid of its political meaning,” said Guillermo Hernandez, the director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center. “It’s just another excuse to party. It’s no different than going to Ensenada and having a beer. I don’t celebrate it in that way, because it doesn’t mean anything to me in that way.”

Julio Estrada knows how Cinco de Mayo is celebrated. He’s from Puebla, where outgunned Mexican troops beat the invading French on May 5, 1862--burnishing the date on the Mexican calendar. “The most important thing is the fireworks,” he said of his hometown’s celebration.

On this May 5, however, Estrada was washing cars at Studio City Hand Car Wash, where Iranian owner Ben Forat was offering a free scrub for every fifth car--just as he does for everyone who wears green on St. Patrick’s Day.

There is no easy answer to why Cinco de Mayo appears headed the way of St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S., according to experts. It has become the top “Mexican” holiday north of the border, usurping Mexican Independence Day, Sept. 16, which is the prime patriotic holiday in Mexico.

At heart, experts say, the holiday tugs at Mexican Americans’ nostalgia for an underdog victory amid centuries of conquest. The battle of Puebla came just 15 years after Mexico lost a third of its territory to the U.S., Hernandez said.

Nostalgia may explain some of the popularity, but to San Fernando Valley activist Albert Melena, alcohol explains the rest.

“It’s kind of tragic that Cinco de Mayo is becoming another St. Patrick’s Day,” said Melena, chairman of Los Angeles County’s branch of Latino Leadership United for Healthy Communities. “Look at the ads. What’s funny now is they are using Spanglish: ‘drinko de Cinco.’ I’m not saying I’m a prohibitionist. If you want a drink, that’s fine. I’m just saying, don’t co-opt our holiday.”

Like the Irish Americans wearying of the alliance of alcohol with what once was a religious holiday, Melena wants Mexican Americans to reconsider the fate of their fiesta before it’s too late.

*

A Problem in the Community

The “drinko de Cinco” Melena talks about is this one: Health experts say downing more than five drinks per sitting at least five times a month makes you a problem drinker. A federal study in 1998 found that Mexican Americans topped every other ethnic group by that measure.

Melena’s group is a minority within a minority so far. But it is part of a nascent national movement, “Cinco de Mayo con Orgullo” (Cinco de Mayo with Pride) that promoted alcohol-free celebrations this year in Los Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, several Texas cities and Chicago. Since its founding in 1997, the coalition has tried to rally crowds around the message that “This culture is not for sale.”

It hasn’t been easy. When a San Diego group began organizing Saturday’s Cinco de Mayo festival in Barrio Logan, it was offered a $10,000 sponsorship from a brewery, according to organizer Jovita Hurtado. She declined to name the would-be benefactor, whose offer was flatly rejected.

“They said, ‘You’re going to need the money; let us help,’” Hurtado said. “They didn’t think we could raise the money on our own.”

This year, Southern California offered a mix of festivals, from the sober to the slick. The alcohol-free fete on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles was jammed with families, some of whom could name the general who fought the Battle of Puebla (Ignacio Zaragoza), and some of whom knew only that it fell on May 5.

Diana Fabian, 26, who said she was half Mexican, said Cinco de Mayo was Independence Day--until her Mexican-born husband, Francisco, 27, corrected her. “He wants the children to be proud of who they are,” she said, pointing to four youngsters, each of whom had a Mexican flag painted on one cheek.

At Whittier Narrows Park, Melena and a video-camera crew pointed out the nearly empty Budweiser beer tents, the only area, he said, where the county permitted alcohol consumption. Melena didn’t take that as a good sign.

“The beer gardens are empty and people are out drinking among the kids,” he said. “It’s kind of a free-for-all.”

Beer purveyors on both sides of the border say they are being scapegoated for the American phenomenon of forgetting the purpose behind most holidays.

“It is a day to celebrate the battles and the independence of our country,” said Jose Pares, director of communications for Grupo Modelo in Mexico City, Mexico’s largest brewer. “Sometimes that is confused in the U.S.A. and people use it as a day of partying.”

Pares could not quantify how much May 5 weekend sales contribute to the revenues of the $3.5-billion-a-year company. But its Corona brand is the top-selling Mexican beer in the U.S. market, and its other labels, Modelo Especial and Pacifico, sell briskly.

“I think there is nothing wrong with having a Mexican drink to celebrate the day,” Pares said. “It is the individual’s choice to drink, not ours.”

Like any other beer maker, Pares would like his company to be the choice among those who “drinko for Cinco.” This year, one Corona radio spot features an appeal to make Cinco de Mayo an American national holiday. Heineken, on the other hand, has played off Corona by counseling imbibers to drink a beer that doesn’t need a lime.

“When you have Heineken advertising, you know there’s money in it,” Melena said.

The alcohol and beer industry sees no problem with another chance to market its product.

*

Compared With St. Patrick’s Day

“Cinco de Mayo, like St. Patrick’s Day, is a day associated with going out with family and friends,” said Beth Davies, spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. “We have actually noticed responsible consumption of spirits during this holiday.”

Melena, who works on substance-abuse issues, however, says studies of data from Los Angeles County show Latino males with higher rates of DUI arrests and cirrhosis of the liver than other population groups. One Los Angeles hospital study showed cirrhosis mortality rates were twice as high for Latino men as for non-Latino whites.

“Alcohol is a factor in the top four means of death for Latinos: suicide, homicide, unintentional injuries and car accidents,” Melena said.

While the cause of those trends may be as multiple as for any social ill, Melena thinks the mainstreaming of Cinco de Mayo doesn’t help. Cultural pride, he noted, used to be a good defense against substance abuse. Now, he said, the media are saturated with the mixed message that drinking is part of Mexican cultural pride.

“We have to try to remember the true meaning, because every year that goes by, it gets worse and worse,” Melena said.

*

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Manuel Gamiz Jr., David Pierson, Laura Loh and Massie Ritsch.