That's more than they did during the Super Bowl, the Fourth of July or St. Cavan ImagesĪmericans spent more than $600 million on beer on Cinco de Mayo in 2013, according to market research company Nielsen. In the US, beverage companies have zeroed in on Cinco de Mayo as a day of drinking Mexican beer and margaritas. They voted for Abraham Lincoln, and many served in the Union army, navy and cavalry. Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine. US citizens of Mexican descent overwhelmingly supported the Union, according to David E. The loss at Puebla and the resources Napoleon expended in Mexico helped derail his strategy to continue northward and bolster the Confederacy.

Napoleon III had aligned with the Confederacy and planned to supply Southern states with weapons in return for cotton, which was being blockaded by the Union. Why is Cinco de Mayo celebrated in the US?Īs the French and Mexicans were battling, the US was embroiled in the American Civil War. In honor of the Mexican victory, Puebla de Los Angeles was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza, and Cinco de Mayo was made a national holiday. Bettmannįrench troops fully withdrew from Mexico in 1867, and Maximilian I, the Austrian archduke Napoleon installed as the country's emperor, was eventually captured and executed.

Emperor Maximillian of Mexico was executed in 1867.