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What Cinco de Mayo means to Panamanians

photo by Eric Jackson

Have you heard of Cinco de Mayo as it is celebrated in the Mexican-American communities of the United States? It's a ver y important day for grocers who sell avocados up there, what with all of that guacamole. To those celebrating their Mexican heritage, it's the anniversary of the smashing defeat handed to the European pretender to a purported Mexican throne, Maximilian Habsburg, by the forces of President Benito Juárez.

In Panama we have Plaza Cinco de Mayo and a firefighters' parade on May 5 for an unrelated reason. On May 5, 1914, near the site of the present-day Hospital Santa Fe, Panama's bomberos (firefighters) were battling a blaze in a row of wooden buildings, and didn't know that in one of them there was an illegal fireworks factory. The blast took the lives of 11 young bomberos.

The emblem of the Cuerpo de Bomberos de Panama contains the words disciplina, honor, and abnegacion --- all of these being English cognizants for those unilingual readers who haven't figured it out --- and these are the values celebrated at Plaza Cinco de Mayo, where Panama City's Avenida Central turns into a pedestrian mall. In next year's election campaign the largest political rallies will likely take place in this plaza, as it is a symbol of heroic public service to which every slimy politician would like to have his or her image linked.