Abstract
This article examines the cultural politics of Cinco de Mayo festivals in Corona, California frorn 1930 to 1950. In the context of strict racial segregation and limited economic opportunities that characterized this agricultural-industrial town in Southern California’s Inland Empire, Mexican American organizers used Cinco de Mayo to promote ethnic solidarity and defend the ethnic Mexican community against racist and nativist attacks. Eventually, I argue, Mexican Americans used Cinco de Mayo festivals as an instrument of political opposition, by using their bicultural skills and appropriating the cultural pluralist discourse of event sponsors to gain access to community resources and demand full participation in American mainstream institutions.
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