Cancionero de Cinco de Mayo

The Battle of Puebla, commonly referred to as Cinco de Mayo, was just one event in a larger conflict called the French Intervention of Mexico, (La intervencion francesa). We’ll save the history lesson to others for now, as it is too complicated to do it justice in a blog post.

As it turns out much of the content found on the web related to this “holiday” revolves (sadly, or amusingly, depending on your mood) around making piñatas, and coloring Mexican flags, or just simply reminding the myopic population of the USA that Mexico even exists.

Instead of all this, today we offer this Sound Cloud archive of popular songs from the era, as recorded by Amparo Ochoa, a Mexican folk singer and ethnomusicologist of sorts.

Some suggested uses:

Use the lyrics and songs in your bilingual or Spanish Class, and have the students do their own research about the terms, personalities and incidents mentioned in these songs.

Be prepared for some harsh anticlerical and anti-European tone and language! Also, be prepared for words that are not exactly in Spanish.

We give credit to INAH and Amapro Ochoa, a Mexican folk singer for putting this together.

Here is a slide share releated to this project with Lyrics!