By NICK PERKINS, Student Reporter
The Spanish club and Sigma Delta Pi will be hosting the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta on April 27th from 5:00PM-7:00PM in the ranger room.
The Cinco de Mayo Fiesta is a dinner they put on. They will have beef, chicken and cheese enchiladas from El Maya; as well as rice and beans from there too. It will be five dollars for faculty and staff, and three dollars for students.
The dinner is put on as a community service learning project for the students, and to help raise money for the Spanish scholarship fund that go to the Northwestern foundation. “We have been doing this for a long time, we have raised more than $10,000 for the fund,” Dr. Martinez said, the professor of Spanish.
This community service learning project is split up into three parts. The first thing they do is go and figure out what the problem is and present this to the class, the problem is that a lot of people do not really know what Cinco de Mayo stands for. The second thing that they do is write about the history of Cinco de Mayo. The third part is to make a brochure that tells about the history of the Cinco de Mayo.
Another reason that they put on the Cinco de Mayo fiesta is to help educate people about Cinco de Mayo. A lot of people think that it is this big holiday celebrated all across Mexico to declare their independence.
Cinco de Mayo actually commemorates the Mexican army’s victory against France in the battle of Puebla during the French and Mexican war. In Mexico this holiday is usually only celebrated in Puebla.
Here in the United States the idea if the holiday is misrepresented because there are a lot of big corporations that use this holiday to try to sell their products. So a lot of people think that is a big holiday celebrated all across Mexico. “In the U.S. it is celebrated a lot more than it is in Mexico,” he said.
The reason they do not do this on the 5th of May is because that Is usually right at the end of the semester and they don’t think that a lot of people would show up because of finals week and lot of students have already left at that point.
“This is a big celebration at the end of the semester,” he said, “for people to come out and enjoy authentic Mexican food.”