Happy Cinqo de Mayo 2009!

Hoisting a Mexican beer, dancing to mariachi music, and reveling in the streets describes the usual celebration of Cinqo de Mayo, aka '5 de Mayo' or 'Cinco de Mayo' but you may wish to know more of why you're celebrating this fun, if highly commercialized, holiday.

UCLA has an informative site, as well as the holiday's Wiki page, and Viva Cinqo de Mayo! gives a more detailed history of the circumstances that led to the Battle of Puebla on the morning of May 5, 1862 when 8,000 French (English and Spanish) troops were routed by 4,000 Mexicans.

Quelle embarrassment! The French Army had not been bested in 50 years.

Plus, Napoleon III had figured the US was otherwise engaged with our own 'Civil' War and wouldn't be a problem. We were. But check out the history as linked above.

Yes, Mexico City was eventually overtaken and occupied with Emperor Napoleon III's installation of a Hapsburg prince to play the part of 'Emperor of Mexico' which went down very badly with the Mexican people as you may imagine.

And the whole mess had been sparked by Mexico's bankruptcy due to - you guessed it - the costs of fighting too many wars. My intuition says that fraud and corruption were involved as well.

Now what do you suppose the US can take from that lesson?

Astrology charts for the date that President Juarez suspended payments on foreign debts (July 17, 1861) shows rebellious, freedom-loving Uranus at 14Gem36; the morning chart on May 5, 1862 has Uranus rising at 7:27 am lmt, 14Gem34, so Cinqo de Mayo was the final conjunction of the Uranus Return to the 1861 chart. (The second and Rx conj was on Nov 29, 1861.)

The chart for May 5, 1862, the Battle of Puebla, also shows Uranus at apex in a midpoint picture involving Jupiter/Neptune, the 'grand spirit; speculation; wasteful' pair of planetary energies, so the original Cinqo de Mayo has this signature ('any, all, or none' may apply)...

Jupiter/Neptune = Uranus: sudden recognition of a difficult situation; reality vs imagination; coming down to earth with a bump; liking the shades; intuitionally innovative; charisma.

~:~

Note: for my own future reference, I am about to publish the natal chart of France in the column of Pages on my other blog, jude's threshold if you're interested. The National chart of France, Sept 21, 1792, naturally relates to the Reign of Terror, and to use of terror tactics by governments in general.

Mexico's natal chart for Declaration of Independence from Spain is dated Sept 15, 1810, midnight (public record.)