Cinco de Mayo 2015

May fifth is Cinco de Mayo, which is Spanish for "The Fifth of May." In addition to being a date on the calendar, it is also a holiday. Most people have heard of it, but relatively few Americans actually know what it about.

And, I discovered, neither do some Mexicans, and it is primarily their holiday.

A lot of people assume it is Mexico's Independence Day, and its not. That's in September. My dogs think it might have something to do with the invention of burritos - and they might be right.

Actually, it isn't

Macky Rae (my younger dog) looked it up online: About a 150 years ago, Mexican forces defeated a larger, better trained French forces. There is a longer, more detailed version on Wikipedia, but essentially it  to commemorate some well deserved ass kicking.

If you want more info, go read the article.

Over the years, it has taken on a different significance, and it has become more or less a Hispanic Cultural Pride Day. And it is also celebrated by non-Hispanics - because everyone likes a party, or in this case a fiesta.

My dogs celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and the reason they celebrate is twofold:

1. They're Hispanic. Or at least they think they are. They are half Chihuahua, so they think that makes them part Mexican.
2. There is food involved. Anything that involves eating ranks fairly high on their list.

Because of its large Hispanic population, Pasco WA (near to where I reside) has a Cinco de Mayo celebration, although it usually gets moved to Saturday. They still call it Cinco de Mayo, even though it was actually Dos de Mayo. There is usually a parade of some sort, followed by singing and dancing, food and drink, and other fiesta activities.



We live in West Richland, which is more or less the opposite side of the TriCities area from Pasco. There is not a large Hispanic presence here, although I have noticed a few Chihuahuas.

 There is, however, a Cinco de Mayo parade - of sorts.

Around noon-ish, there is the unofficial West Richland Cinco de Mayo Parade (and Taco Feed!). We, that is me and my dogs, head out from our place, walk up a block to the main road, then "parade" down - past the Car Wash, the Zip E Mart, Lorenzo's Restaurant, the mini-mall, etc, etc, until we reach The Taco Truck. We make our selections, then go down to the nearby park and /eat/ our selections.
Ok, the Pasco parade is more elaborate, be we like our version just fine.



Some people have an issue with Pasco, and the Hispanics, primarily over the non-English speaking people. And to some degree I agree with them, after all this is America and you should speak the official language of the country which is...

Actually, the United States doesn't have an official language.

When people deride Pasco's Hispanic community (and the not speaking of English), I remind them of a time, many years ago, when parts of Pasco were a bad, dangerous, part of town. It wasn't safe to walk the streets at night. Then the Hispanics moved, bringing their strong, catholic family values. That part of town became nicer, safer.

And their yards look nice.

And Viera's Bakery on the corner of 4th and Lewis is totally awesome - even my dogs thinks so.

Over the years, many of the stereotypes attributed to Hispanics (and other cultures) have been discarded in favor of a more enlightened view. On of the (almost) dicarded stereotypes was Speedy Gonzoles - and heaven forbid you don't know who he is.

For those who don't (¡Ay, caramba!), he is a loony toons character, The "Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico."

The Cartoon Network, about 15 years ago, decided to not show Speedy cartoons, as they might offended Hispanics.

What "offended" the Hispanics was having their mouse removed from the cartoon line-up.

As speedy doesn't do anything that might be considered offensive (culturally), Hispanics love him. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens called Speedy a "cultural icon", and thousands of users registered their support of the character on the hispaniconline.com message boards. Fan campaigns to put Speedy back on the air resulted in the return of the animated shorts to Cartoon Network in 2002.

By profession, I am a cook and so over the years I have primarily worked to one degree or another in the food service industry. One of the places that I worked, whom I shall not mention by name but I will tell you that it was a seafood place that had lobsters. Red ones.

I also won't mention that they are managed by weasels, because it would be unfair. I didn't work at ALL of their restaurants (just one), but the one I did work at had weasels, and the district manager was rather furry as well.

I'm not saying they are the worst as weasels go, but there are above average, weaselistically speaking. 

But I digress.

I worked primarily evenings, and usually got off work around 10:30 or so. I often stopped in at the 24hr dinner across the street for a bite to eat before heading home. One night, one of my co-workers, Miguel, came in (for coffee, and to wait for his wife to get off work and come pick him up). He spotted me, and asked if he could join me (I said yes) and for almost an hour we had a rather pleasant conversation. We discovered that we were both descended from farm and working class people, we both agreed that an unnamed waitress was cute, that the managers were pendejos (Spanish for weasels), and we both thought that Luis (another co-worker) was completely insane. And a few other things. We talked until Gabriella (Mrs Miguel) arrived.

Now what was interesting about our conversation was the fact that Miguel spoke about as much English as I did Spanish, which wasn't much. I can order a beer and ask where the restrooms are, and a few odd phrases like "¿Por qué hay un puerco en el baño?" (Why is there a pig in the bathroom?)

So how did we manage to even talk, let alone have a detailed conversation? Because we wanted to, and were not going to allow something as trivial as a language barrier stop us. We gestured a lot, and drew pictures, but we managed to communicate.



Speaking of a language barrier (and crimson crustaceans) another co-worker was a Chinese man by the name of Wei-xing "Sam" Jong, who was from Canton (China). Sam was college educated, and was Majoring in language at the University of Canton. He spoke in addition to his native languages of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese - six other languages, including English.

Spanish was not one of these six.

This proved comical, and frustrating, as "Sam" tried to communicate with the non-English speaking employees. He would try to employ a bi-lingual translator, but his English was not perfect, and his Asian accent made comprehension by Hispanics problematic.

Hell, I had trouble understanding him, and I speak English.

On evening, after the dinner rush ended, some of us cooks went outside for a smoke break.

Officially, we were taking out the trash. If you grabbed a bag of garbage when you were heading outside, it was a "trash run" and the store still owed you a 10-minute "smoke break" later.

So we were all out smoking, someone commented on "Sam's" trouble earlier that evening communicating with co-workers.

"Sam" he was asked. "when you were going to college, you knew you wanted to immigrate to the United States, right?"

"Yes" he answered.

"Then why didn't you take a year of Spanish before you came here????"



Macky Rae, my younger dog is learning to be bi-lingual. He is learning to speak pig Latin. We wants to be smarter than a pig.

Most of us do.

Some fail to achieve this.

On that note...


Before we start the parade , we, that is me and my dogs, would like to end this blog entry with a song. It's a popular Spanish song called Cielito Lindo. Some of you may know it, and if you want to sing along with us, please feel free to do so.

ME:
De la Sierra Morena,
Cielito lindo, vienen bajando
Un par de ojitos negros,
cielito lindo, de contraband

DOGS:
Ay, ay, ay, ay, Canta y no llores,
Porque cantando se alegran,
Cielito lindo, los corazones

ME:
Pajaro que abandona,
Cielito lindo, su primer nido,
Si lo encuentra ocupado,
Cielito lindo, bien merecido

DOGS:
Ay, ay, ay, ay,
   MACKY: Let go get tacos
   ME: Macky!
Porque cantando se alegran,
Cielito lindo, los corazones

ME:
Ese lunar que tienes,
Cielito lindo, junto a la boca,
No se lo des a nadie,
Cielito lindo que a mi me toca

DOGS:
Ay, ay, ay, ay,
   MACKY: It's time to go get tacos!
   ME: Macky, quit that!!
Porque cantando se alegran,
Cielito lindo, los corazones

ME:
Una flecha en el aire,
cietito lindo, lanzo Cupido,
si la tiro jugando,
cielito lindo, a mi me ha herido,

DOGS:
Ay, ay, ay, ay, we all want tacos!,
   ME: Hey!!!
Burritos and Nachos, Beans and Rice
Corn chips with lots of Salsa!