<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">Cinco de Mayo</div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">those whose land is starved of blood,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">civilizations which are no longer<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">holders of the night. We reconquer with our feet,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">with our tongues, that dangerous language,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">saying more of this world than the volumes<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">of textured and controlled words on a page. <br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">We are the gentle rage; our hands hold<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">the stream of the earth, the flowers<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">of dead cities, the green of butterfly wings.<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">Cinco de Mayo is about the barefoot, the untooled,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">the warriors of want who took on the greatest army<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">Europe ever mustered—and won.<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">I once saw a Mexican man stretched across<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">an upturned sidewalk<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">near Chicago's 18th and Bishop one fifth of May day.<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">He brought up a near-empty bottle<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">to the withering sky and yelled out a grito<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">with the words: ¡Que viva Cinco de Mayo! <br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">And I knew then what it meant—<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">what it meant for barefoot Zapoteca indigenas<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">in the Battle of Puebla and what it meant for me<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">there on <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://1" dir="ltr" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1" style="color: currentcolor; text-decoration-color: rgba(127, 127, 127, 0.380392); text-decoration: inherit !important;" class="">18th Street</a> among los ancianos, <br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">the moon-faced children and futureless youth<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">dodging the gunfire and careening battered cars,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">and it brought me to that war<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">that never ends, the war Cinco de Mayo <br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">was a battle of, that I keep fighting,<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">that we keep bleeding for, that war<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">against a servitude that a compa<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">on <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://2" dir="ltr" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2" style="color: currentcolor; text-decoration-color: rgba(127, 127, 127, 0.380392); text-decoration: inherit !important;" class="">18th Street</a> knew all about<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">as he crawled inside a bottle of the meanest<br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class="">Mexican spirits. </div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- Luis Rodriguez</div></div></body></html>