The LULAC Club celebrated Cinco De Mayo on May 4 during lunch.  The club gave ice pops, which were donated by Paleteria California Del Sur and featured a music group, Grupo Doble O for entertainment.

May 5 is the commemoration date of the Battle of Puebla, marking the victory of the Mexican army against the French invasion, which was the first time it successfully confronted a foreign power since its independence.

The United States also celebrates this event because the Mexican forces did not allow the passage of France to U.S. soil. In 1863, the country was bankrupt due to half a century of almost constant conflict and war. It could not face the most urgent needs, so on July 17, 1861, President Benito Juárez decreed a two-year extension to pay the foreign debt to European countries.

In October 1861, France, England and Spain subscribed to the London Convention and committed themselves to send soldiers to Mexico to claim their rights as creditors for a debt that amounted to around 80 million pesos. Approximately 69 million were for the English, 9 million for the Spanish and 2 million for France. The latter refused to negotiate, through diplomatic channels, the terms and conditions under which the debt would be paid later, as the Spanish and British did in the Preliminary Treaties of La Soledad. So Napoleon III, ruler of France, decided to invade Mexico to establish a monarchy favorable to France, supply himself with raw materials and in the future extend his imperialism to the United States. To this end, he was to dissolve the Mexican government established by President Benito Juarez.

In April 1862, the French disembarked in the port of Veracruz, and began the military campaign towards the center of the Republic. After several attacks, on May 5, 1862, the battle took place on the hill of Loreto, on the top of which there was a chapel conditioned as a fort to defend the city of Puebla. The hero of the first battle of Puebla was General Ignacio Zaragoza in command of almost 2000 soldiers and 2700 peasants using machetes and spears called “chinacas” made of wood with metal tips. The French used pistols, metal-tipped carbines, bayonets and cannons. General Zaragoza’s report on the Battle of Puebla to President Benito Juarez was brief and significant.

There are many explanations as to why the date is so popular in the United States of America. They range from the interpretation of some historians who see the Mexican victory on Cinco de Mayo as a factor that helped the triumph of federal forces against the southern slave states in the American Civil War, to the idea that the defeat postponed the French occupation of Mexico and prevented Napoleon III from aiding Confederate troops in a key period of the Civil War. This would affirm that the impact of the Mexican victory at Puebla in 1862 and then the siege of that city in 1863 echoed in the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, where the victory of the Federal forces defined the end for the Confederacy.