Foggy Bottom’s sec­ond Cinco de Mayo cel­e­bra­tion last Saturday—with a live Mari­achi band and authen­tic Oax­a­can (pro­nounced Waha– kan) tamales—started at the Water­gate Mall Plaza with an audi­ence of 40 that grew to 100 as the stiff breeze sub­sided and fore­bod­ing clouds dis­persed. The event high­light was a pas­sion­ate talk by Bar­bara Tenen­baum, Mex­i­can Cul­tural Spe­cial­ist from the Library of Congress.

She dis­cussed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Mex­i­can and U.S. val­ues begin­ning with the objec­tives of pres­i­den­tial con­tem­po­raries, Ben­ito Juarez and Abra­ham Lin­coln, both chal­lenged by civil wars.

Dr. Tenen­baum pointed out that Mex­ico, like the U.S., pushed monar­chy aside for democ­racy, cham­pi­oned the end of slav­ery and the promise of lib­erty for all, and did not endorse the Church, as was typ­i­cal of the South Amer­i­can and Euro­pean coun­tries of the time. She said this really rep­re­sented the “New World,” a depar­ture from the “Old World” of landed Euro­pean aris­toc­racy rul­ing the country.

At the time there were only two paths to attain suc­cess for the non-gentry, the Church or mil­i­tary. Juarez, an orphan and Zapotec Indian, chose nei­ther and forged his own way, leav­ing his vil­lage and walk­ing the 44 miles to Mex­ico City to begin his edu­ca­tion. He became a lawyer, a judge, and ulti­mately entered pol­i­tics, which cost him dearly. He lost five chil­dren while in office. He was impris­oned twice, sched­uled for exe­cu­tion and went into hid­ing, once in the United States.

As Tenen­baum stated, Juarez, like Lin­coln, was low-key—even said to be “boring”—because his focus was on nation build­ing and a big­ger cause rather than per­sonal enrich­ment or self­ag­gran­dize­ment. He chose to wear a black suit and refrained from the adorn­ments of medals or a mil­i­tary uni­form. Juarez could have eas­ily accepted the impo­si­tion and aid­ing of then-Emperor Max­i­m­il­ian, but he took the more dif­fi­cult path.

Foggy Bottom’s cel­e­bra­tion of Cinco de Mayo is unique among U.S. cel­e­bra­tions. We are the guardians of the cher­ished Ben­ito Juarez Memo­r­ial Statue, a gift from the Mex­i­can peo­ple to the Amer­i­can peo­ple on the occa­sion of the open­ing of the Kennedy Cen­ter in 1968. Had our FB com­mu­nity not pre­vailed, the statue of Mexico’s first and still most beloved Pres­i­dent would have been removed.

Our cel­e­bra­tion also rec­og­nizes the friend­ship of the Mex­i­can people—steadfast as allies—regardless of their eco­nomic and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. Juarez sup­ported Pres­i­dent Lin­coln by return­ing Con­fed­er­ate gen­er­als and was like­wise sup­ported by Lin­coln with much needed arms to fight the French at the end of our civil war. In WWII, Mex­ico sent their elite Aztec Eagles to pro­vide air sup­port with the 58th Fighter Group in the lib­er­a­tion of the Philip­pines. Fly­ing P-47D “Thun­der­bolt” sin­gle­seat fighter air­craft, pilots flew long-range sor­ties over For­mosa, earn­ing praise from Allied the­ater com­man­der, Gen­eral Dou­glas MacArthur, and dec­o­ra­tions from the U.S., Mex­i­can and Philip­pine governments.

With FB community’s preser­va­tion and guardian­ship of Juarez Cir­cle and its memo­r­ial statue, we cel­e­brate our nations’ friend­ship and, in so doing, we learn more about Juarez — an excep­tional leader — and of the high­est of val­ues shared among us as “true” fel­low Americans.

This event was under­writ­ten by the FBA Defense and Improve­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mex­i­can Cul­tural Institute.