Today is my first Cinco de Mayo since leaving southern California, and clearly the holiday is much less a part of the culture in southern Florida than it is there. It's not a day that I've ever celebrated myself, and given the ongoing disaster that has been Mexican governments, alternating between feudalism and crony socialism, since Independence and up to the present day, I'm often puzzled that the Mexicans celebrate it, though I suppose they're still better off than they were as a colony, given who the colonialists were. It wasn't, of course, the day that they won their independence--that happened much earlier--but it was almost certainly the day that they cemented it.

But for Americans, there is one thing to celebrate today--it was a spectacular (which is to say, typical) military disaster for the French.

In Houston, its been remarked quite a bit in the media and around the water cooler, that the 5th of May is not celebrated nearly as much across the Rio Grande as it is in Texas.

I think most of it is marketing, but I also think some of it is that Mexicans in Mexico find little to celebrate about their government.

Cinco de Mayo isn't "Mexican Independence Day"; Dieciséis de Septiembre is. May 5 is a fairly minor holiday in Mexico, but it's become a kind of Mexican "St. Patrick's Day" here. There's an article about all of this at Wikipedia.

Rand, as far as south Florida is concerned, well, Cubans don't feel a pressing need to celebrate Mexican holidays. Though I must admit I have seen a few of my Cuban friends out drinking on May 5 up here in Tampa.

Actually I have worked down there some, and lived in San Diego and what you say is correct.

However if Castro ever dies and Cuba is liberated, the party will last a year. And be celebrated with Mucho Gusto.