Cinco de Mayo Day is a local tradition. There is a small Mexican population due to the port. They get off the ship and never get back on. They disappear into the Hispanic community. You won’t see or hear from them again until Cinco de Mayo Day. On that day you hear them loud and clear.

Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of the day a ragtag Mexican army whipped the French invaders. This year that was really, really being celebrated. Even the non-Hispanics were celebrating that one. Tequila was the order of the day...and the night. So was throwing up.

On that holiday 30 Mexicans load into a pickup truck and drive around shouting, yelling, singing and shooting guns into the air. They celebrate hard. It’s loud but harmless and trouble-free. That is, it is if the city council had left things be.

The cops had gotten to where they would block off the Hispanic neighborhoods and leave everyone alone. No one got hurt and no one got arrested. The cops would just wave at the passing pickups and vans. The next day everything would get back to normal. Well, not the next day. Then the city council, five non-Hispanic white and four blacks, got a wild hair and ordered the cops to arrest people.

“It’s unseemly”, one of the councilmen was quoted as saying.

The cops had a laugh at that one. They had picked this guy up out of the gutters more than once. Now they were supposed to quiet down a bunch of celebrating Mexicans. Mission Impossible.

The Watch Commander told his troops, “I was told this just as if it was possible. Well, it ain’t. Just do what you always do and leave the Mexicans alone. Jeez, what a stupid idea”.

The Mexicans heard about the council action and celebrated even harder. A couple of them celebrated down on Snob Row. That really upset the white folks. The cops did have to arrest these ones. They protested that they were just having a good time.

“Listen, this is Snob Row. No one has a good time here. If the people living here don’t then you sure ain’t goin’ to”, a cop told a drunken Mexican. The cop drove him back to the island and dropped him off.

A few of them went into the Martin Luther King Memorial District and celebrated. That got all the civil rights leaders up in arms and brought the cops out in full force. That set the Mexicans off. They couldn’t get the cops to come out for anything. To say a riot occurred would be a mild statement.

“Jeez, Sarge, why didn’t 911 say it was a wrong number?”, a young cop asked.

“Because they’re stupid.”

Meanwhile, the Mayor and the City Council were toasting the Mexican community with Margaritas. They were dipping tacos into Salsa and pretending their mouths weren’t numb. They were ignoring the gunfire and the sirens.

The local Hispanic leader have decided that next year there was going to be a change in plans. The day before Cinco de Mayo the bridges across to the island will be closed for a “safety inspection”. By the time anyone finds out that it wasn’t the state doing it, Cinco de Mayo will be over.

Will it work? As one of the leaders said, “Gringos? Es stupidos”.