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Former Pope Benedict XVI Dead at Age 95

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Former Pope Benedict XVI Dead at Age 95

Former Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff to resign in 600 years, died on Saturday at the age of 95 in the Vatican, according to a Holy See spokesman. “With sadness, I inform you that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9.34 a.m. in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” a spokesman said in a written statement.

According to the Vatican, Pope Francis will preside over his predecessor’s funeral on January 5.

Benedict, the first German pope in 1,000 years, stepped down in 2013 due to failing health, leaving behind a Catholic Church beleaguered by sexual abuse scandals, mired in mismanagement, and divided between conservatives and progressives.

He had good relations with his successor, but his continued presence inside the Vatican after he stepped down polarized the Church ideologically even more.

Concerned about Pope Francis‘s progressive moves, conservatives looked to Benedict as the defender of tradition. Several times, he had to tell nostalgic visitors, “There is only one Pope, and his name is Francis.”

Pope Benedict, a pianist and formidable theologian, was a weak leader who struggled to impose himself on the opaque Vatican bureaucracy and stumbled from crisis to crisis during his eight-year reign.

He repeatedly apologized for the Church’s failure to root out clergy sexual abuse of children, and despite being the first pope to take serious action against abuse, his efforts failed to halt a rapid decline in church attendance in the West, particularly in Europe.

Pope Benedict XVI Resigns

In 2022, an independent report in his native Germany claimed Benedict failed to act in four abuse cases while serving as Archbishop of Munich between 1977 and 1982. After being shaken by the report, he apologized in an emotional personal letter and asked for forgiveness.

In a detailed rebuttal, his lawyers argued that he was not directly to blame.

Victims’ groups claimed that the evasive response squandered an opportunity arising from a scandal that shook the Church worldwide.

On February 11, 2013, Benedict shocked the world by announcing in Latin that he was resigning, telling cardinals that he was too old and frail to lead an institution with over 1.3 billion members.

It was always going to be difficult following the death of his charismatic predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in 2005, and Benedict admitted to difficulties in an emotional farewell address.

“There were happy and light moments, but there were also difficult moments.” “There were moments… when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us, and it seemed as if the Lord was sleeping,” Benedict said to a crowd of more than 150,000 people at his last general audience.

On February 28, 2013, Benedict took up residence at the papal summer retreat at Castelgandolfo, south of Rome, while cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican to elect his successor.

Pope Francis’ election

Prior to formally stepping down, Benedict and his aides chose the title “pope emeritus” and decided he would continue to wear a white cassock, albeit a slightly modified version. Some in the Church objected, claiming that he had tied his successor’s hands.

They said he should have dressed like a cardinal or a priest in red or black.

Following Pope Francis’ election on March 13, Benedict moved into a converted convent on Vatican grounds to spend his final years praying, reading, playing the piano, and receiving visitors.

He appeared in public only on rare occasions, usually for major Church ceremonies, though he paid an emotional visit to his ailing elder brother Georg, a priest, in Bavaria in June 2020. Georg died soon after, at the age of 96.

Benedict did not keep his promise to remain “hidden from the world,” and his writings in retirement occasionally caused controversy and confusion.

In a 2019 essay for a German Church magazine, he blamed the crisis over priest abuse of children on the 1960s sexual revolution, what he called homosexual cliques in seminaries, and a general collapse in morality.

Critics accused him of attempting to shift blame away from the institutional Church’s hierarchy. Conservatives, however, rejoiced, and rallied to his defense.

Benedict and the cardinal

The ambiguity surrounding Benedict’s role reached a head in January 2020, when it was revealed that he was involved in a book written by a conservative cardinal that some saw as an attempt to influence a document Pope Francis was preparing.

As a result, Francis fired Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Benedict’s secretary, from a top Vatican position. Many people believed Ganswein misled Benedict, the cardinal, or both as a middleman between Benedict and the cardinal.

Some Vatican officials have called for clear rules regarding the status of any future pontiff who resigns as a result of the incident.

Francis has stated that if he were to resign, he would prefer the title Emeritus Bishop of Rome, as suggested by some. He has also stated that he will not live in the Vatican but rather in a Rome home for retired priests.

Benedict, an uncompromising conservative on social and theological issues, literally cloaked himself in tradition during his papacy, frequently donning fur-trimmed capes and red shoes in public appearances — a stark contrast to his successor’s more humble, down-to-earth style.

He enraged Muslims by implying that Islam is inherently violent, and he enraged Jews by rehabilitating a Holocaust denier. The gaffes and blunders reached a climax in 2012, when leaked documents revealed corruption, intrigue, and feuding within the Vatican.

As a result of the “Vatileaks” case, his butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and convicted of passing secret documents to a journalist. Benedict later forgave him. Gabriele was hired at a Vatican-owned hospital and died there in 2020.

Gay Clergy Lobby

The media speculated that the saga, which exposed allegations of a gay clergy lobby operating against the pope, might have put pressure on him to resign. Benedict insisted on stepping down because he could no longer bear the full weight of the papacy, including the exhausting international travel required by the job.

In a book-length interview published in 2016, he acknowledged his flaws but stated that his papacy was not a failure.

“Perhaps one of my weaknesses is a lack of resolve in governing and making decisions. In reality, I am more of a professor, someone who reflects and meditates on spiritual issues,” Benedict stated in the book “Last Testament,” written by German journalist Peter Seewald.

“Practical government is not my strong point and that is certainly a weakness. But I don’t consider myself a failure.” On April 16, 1927, in the southern German village of Marktl, close to Austria, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born.

During World War II, he was forcibly enrolled in the Hitler Youth and briefly held as a prisoner of war by the Allies, but he was never a member of the Nazi party.

“Neither Ratzinger nor any member of his family were National Socialists,” wrote John Allen, a leading Church expert, in a biography of Benedict.

Ratzinger was ordained as a priest in 1951 and rose to prominence as a liberal theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council, which convened in 1962 and resulted in profound Church reform.

God’s Rottweiler

The Marxism and atheism of the 1968 student protests across Europe, on the other hand, prompted him to become more conservative in order to defend the faith against growing secularism.

After stints as a theology professor and then Archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger was appointed in 1981 to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the successor office to the Inquisition, where he earned the epithet “God’s Rottweiler”.

After a period of experimentation, he and Pope John Paul agreed that traditional doctrine needed to be restored in the Church.

Ratzinger first addressed the popular “liberation theology” in Latin America, ordering the one-year silence of Brazilian friar Leonardo Boff in 1985, whose writings were criticized for using Marxist ideas.

Ratzinger applied pressure on theologians, primarily in Asia, who saw non-Christian religions as part of God’s plan for humanity in the 1990s.

Ratzinger’s office condemned “radical feminism” in a 2004 document as an ideology that undermined the family and obscured the natural differences between men and women.

Benedict sought to show the world the gentler side of his nature as Pope from 2005, but he never achieved the “rock star” status of John Paul or appeared particularly at ease in the job.

Child abuse scandals dogged him for the majority of his pontificate. He called for an official investigation into abuse in Ireland, which resulted in the resignation of several bishops.

During his pontificate, however, the Vatican’s relations with once-devoutly Catholic Ireland deteriorated. In 2011, Dublin closed its embassy to the Holy See.

Profound consternation

Victims demanded that the International Criminal Court investigate him. The Vatican ruled that he could not be held accountable for the crimes of others, and the court declined to hear the case.

In September 2013, he denied covering up the scandals. “As for your mentioning moral abuse of minors by priests, as you know, I can only acknowledge it with profound consternation.

“However, I never attempted to conceal these facts,” he wrote in a letter to Italian author Piergiorgio Odifreddi.

Benedict visited his homeland three times as Pope, confronting its dark past at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland. As a “son of Germany,” he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died there during World War II.

One of his trips to Germany triggered the first major crisis of his pontificate. In a 2006 university lecture, he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying that Islam had only brought evil to the world, which was spread by the sword.

Following protests that included attacks on churches in the Middle East and the killing of a nun in Somalia, the pope apologized for any confusion his speech had caused.

Later that year, in a move widely perceived as conciliatory, he made a historic trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey, praying in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque with the city’s grand mufti.

Offending the Jews

In 2008, the pope visited the United States, where he apologized for the sexual abuse scandal, promised that pedophile priests would be expelled, and consoled abuse victims. But Benedict made a series of errors in 2009.

After lifting the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, one of whom was a notorious Holocaust denier, the Jewish world and many Catholics were outraged. Benedict later stated that the Vatican should have done more research on him.

Jews were offended again in December 2009, when he relaunched the process of resurrecting his wartime predecessor Pius XII, who was accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, after a two-year pause for reflection.

In March 2009, the Pope shocked the world by telling reporters on a plane flying to Africa that the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS only made matters worse.

Benedict preferred to appoint men he trusted at the Vatican, and some of his early appointments were questioned.

He appointed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who had worked with him in the Vatican’s doctrinal office for years, as secretary of state, despite the fact that Bertone had no diplomatic experience. Bertone was later embroiled in a financial scandal involving the renovation of his Vatican apartment.

Pope Benedict wrote three encyclicals

Other religions criticized Benedict in 2007 when he approved a document that reiterated the Vatican’s position that non-Catholic Christian denominations were not full churches of Jesus Christ.

Critics saw his papacy as a concerted effort to reverse the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, which modernized the Church in sometimes turbulent ways.

Some Council decisions were rewritten by Benedict to conform to traditional practices such as the Latin Mass and highly centralized Vatican rule. One of the themes he frequently returned to was the threat of relativism, which rejected the idea that moral values were not absolute but rather relative to those who held them and the times in which they lived.

Pope Benedict wrote three encyclicals, the most important type of papal document, including Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope), an attack on atheism, in 2007. The 2009 Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) declaration called for a rethinking of how the global economy is run.

Despite the difficulties that came with having two men dressed in white in the Vatican, Francis developed a warm relationship with the man who was once dubbed “the Panzer Cardinal” and described it as being like having a grandfather in the house.

“He speaks little… but with the same profundity,” Francis once said.

Geoff Thomas is a seasoned staff writer at VORNews, a reputable online publication. With his sharp writing skills and deep understanding of SEO, he consistently delivers high-quality, engaging content that resonates with readers. Thomas' articles are well-researched, informative, and written in a clear, concise style that keeps audiences hooked. His ability to craft compelling narratives while seamlessly incorporating relevant keywords has made him a valuable asset to the VORNews team.

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As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

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Washington — After a student leader from the historic Tiananmen Square demonstrations ran for Congress in New York in 2022, a Chinese intelligence operator quickly hired a private investigator to look for any mistresses or tax issues that could jeopardize the candidate’s candidacy, according to prosecutors.

“In the end,” the operative warned his contact, “violence would be fine too.”

Tehran was listening as an Iranian journalist and activist in exile in the United States spoke out against Iran’s human rights violations. According to the Justice Department, members of an Eastern European organized crime group surveyed her Brooklyn home and planned to assassinate her in a murder-for-hire scheme directed from Iran. The attempt was disrupted, and criminal charges were filed.

The instances highlight the extraordinary efforts taken by countries such as China and Iran to intimidate, harass and even plot attacks on political opponents and activists in the United States. They demonstrate the alarming effects that geopolitical tensions may have for regular citizens, as governments that have historically been intolerant of dissent within their borders are increasingly casting a wary eye on those who cry out thousands of kilometers away.

“We’re not living in fear or paranoia, but the reality is very clear: the Islamic Republic wants us dead, and we have to look over our shoulder every day,” Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad stated in an interview.

The Justice Department has taken note of the matter, charging dozens of defendants with acts of global repression during the last five years. Senior FBI officials told The Associated Press that the tactics have become more sophisticated, including the use of proxies such as private investigators and organized crime leaders, and that countries are more willing to cross “serious red lines” ranging from harassment to violence to project power abroad and suppress dissent.

AP News – VOR News Image

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

Foreign adversaries are increasingly prioritizing well-funded intimidation campaigns for their intelligence services, and more countries — including some not traditionally hostile to the United States — have targeted critics in America and elsewhere in the West, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their investigations.

The Justice Department, for example, reported last November a foiled conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York, which officials said was ordered by an Indian government official. Rwanda kidnapped Paul Rusesabagina of “Hotel Rwanda” fame from Texas and returned him to the country before releasing him, while Saudi Arabia has persecuted dissidents online and in person, according to the FBI.

“This is a huge priority for us,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security officer, citing an “alarming rise” in government-directed harassment.

He stated that the prosecutions are intended not just to hold harassers accountable but also to convey that the actions are “unacceptable from the perspective of United States sovereignty and defending American values — values around free expression and free association.”

Other countries have witnessed a rise in incidents.

According to an April Reporters Without Borders investigation, London is a “hotspot” for Iranian attacks on Persian-language broadcasters, with British counterterrorism police probing a one-month-old attack on an Iranian television presenter outside his London home. Despite Moscow’s protestations, harassment and attacks on Russians in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, including a journalist who became ill as a result of a suspected poisoning in Germany, have long been blamed on Russian intelligence agents.

Inside the United States, the trend is exacerbated by a deteriorating relationship with Iran and tensions with China over issues ranging from trade and intellectual property theft to electoral interference. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are also expected to be used for future harassment, according to a new danger assessment from US intelligence authorities.

“Transnational repression is a manifestation of the broader conflict between authoritarian regimes and democratic countries,” Olsen added. “It’s been a consistent theme of the way the world is changing from a geopolitical standpoint over the last decade.”

According to officials and supporters, China and Iran are two primary offenders.

Emails sent to the Iranian mission at the United Nations have yet to be responded to. A representative for the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied that the country engages in the practice, stating that the government “strictly abides by international law, and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries.”

“We resolutely oppose ‘long-arm jurisdiction,'” the statement stated.

AP News – VOR News Image

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

However, US officials said China developed a campaign to do just that, starting “Operation Fox Hunt” to locate down Chinese expats targeted by Beijing to pressure them into returning to face charges.

A former Chinese city government official residing in New Jersey discovered a message in Chinese characters pinned to his front door that read: “If you are willing to return to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be fine.” According to a 2020 Justice Department case accusing a group of Chinese operatives and an American private investigator, “that’s the end of the matter!”

Though most defendants charged in transnational repression plans are based in their own country, arrests and prosecutions are rare; that particular case resulted in the conviction of a private investigator and two Chinese residents living in the United States last year.

Bob Fu, a Chinese American Christian pastor whose group, ChinaAid, promotes religious freedom in China, said he has faced extensive harassment for years. Large crowds of demonstrators have gathered for days at a time outside his West Texas house, arriving in well-coordinated operations that he says are related to the Chinese government.

Phony hotel reservations have been made in his name, as well as phony bomb threats to police claiming that he intends to detonate explosives. Flyers picturing him as the devil were given to neighbors. He stated that he has learned to take precautions when traveling, such as instructing his staff not to disclose his schedule in advance and that he has relocated from his home at the request of law authorities.

“I’m not feeling safe,” Fu told the Associated Press. When it comes to returning to China, where he was reared and fled more than 25 years ago as a religious refugee, he says“I may be permitted to fly back, but it will be a one-way ticket. “I am sure I am on their wanted list.”

In 2020, protesters targeted Wu Jianmin, a former student leader in China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement, outside his home in Irvine, California. The harassment lasted more than two months.

“They shouted slogans outside my home and made verbal abuses,” he added. “They paraded in the neighborhood, distributed all sorts of pictures and flyers, and put them in the neighbors’ mailboxes.”

Wu says that perpetrators of harassment plots include retired Communist Party members living in the United States, their offspring, members of Chinese organizations with deep ties to the Chinese government, and even fugitives seeking bargains with Beijing.

“The end goal is the same,” Wu remarked during an interview in Mandarin Chinese. “Their task, as assigned by the Communist Party, is to suppress overseas pro-democracy activists.”

Last year, the Justice Department charged approximately three dozen officers from China’s national police force with using social media to target dissidents in the United States, including the creation of fake accounts that shared harassing videos and comments, and arrested two men who it claims helped establish a secret police outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood on behalf of the Chinese government.

The year before, federal prosecutors in New York revealed several wide-ranging plans to suppress dissidents, including one to dig up dirt on a little-known and ultimately unsuccessful congressional candidate.

Other targets have included American figure skater Alysa Liu and her father, Arthur, a political refugee who, according to prosecutors, were surveilled by a man posing as an Olympics committee member and requesting passport information.

A dissident artist in California made a sculpture depicting the coronavirus with the visage of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was similarly destroyed and burned.

“We should be under no illusion that somehow these are rogue actors or people unaffiliated with the Chinese government,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and member of a special House committee on China, said of the Chinese agents indicted.

‘Remove his head from his torso.’

In some cases, violence is organized in response to global events.

Prosecutors in 2022 charged an Iranian spy with paying $300,000 to “eliminate” Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton in retaliation for an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful commander.

This year, the Justice Department charged an Iranian, identified as a drug trafficker and intelligence operative, as well as two Canadians, one a “full-patch” member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, in a murder-for-hire plot against two Iranians who had fled the country and were living in Maryland.

AP News – VOR News Image

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

“We gotta erase his head from his torso,” one of the hired Canadians is accused of stating. Law enforcement stopped the threat.

Alinejad, an Iranian journalist, was targeted even before the Justice Department revealed the murder-for-hire scheme last year. In 2021, prosecutors prosecuted a gang of Iranians allegedly working for the country’s intelligence agencies with plotting to kidnap her.

Alinejad is still a renowned journalist and passionate opposition leader, and she says she intends to continue speaking out, including at a sentencing trial last year for a woman who prosecutors say unknowingly sponsored the kidnapping plot.

However, the story specifics are deeply ingrained in her consciousness. The criminal cases revealed the gravity of the threat she faced and the heinous preparations involved, such as researching how to whisk Alinejad out of New York on a military-style speedboat and transport her to Venezuela, as well as discussing lures for luring her from her home, such as asking for flowers from the garden outside.

One of the defendants in the murder-for-hire scheme was apprehended in 2022 after being discovered driving through Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighborhood with a loaded firearm and rounds of ammunition. Another defendant was extradited from the Czech Republic in February to face criminal proceedings. Two other people have been arrested.

The FBI interrupted the plot and encouraged Alinejad to relocate, which she did. But it also meant bidding goodbye to her beloved garden, which had brought her delight as she shared homegrown cucumbers and other veggies with her neighbors.

“They didn’t kill me physically, but they killed my relationship with my garden, with my neighbors,” Alinejad added.

SOURCE – (AP)

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Heavy Rains Ease Around Houston But Flooding Remains After Hundreds Of Rescues And Evacuations

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Houston — Floodwaters stopped some Texas schools on Monday after days of severe rainfall hit the Houston area, resulting in hundreds of rescues, including individuals stranded on rooftops.

According to authorities, a 5-year-old boy died after traveling in a car that was swept away by swift floods.

Although forecasts expected storms to subside in southeastern Texas, high water continued restricting several roadways, leaving homeowners with lengthy cleanups in neighborhoods where rising river levels prompted weekend evacuation orders.

AP News – VOR News Image

Heavy Rains Ease Around Houston But Flooding Remains After Hundreds Of Rescues And Evacuations

Houston is one of the most flood-prone metropolitan areas in the country. Hurricane Harvey poured historic rainfall in 2017, flooding thousands of houses and requiring more than 60,000 rescues.

In one rainy region of Houston, Channelview school officials postponed classes after a survey of their employees revealed that many of them had experienced conditions that prevented them from coming to work.

“These folks have suffered much, people,” Trinity County Sheriff Woody Wallace said during a Facebook video Sunday as he paddled a boat through a rural flooded area. Cars and street signs were partially submerged, peeking above the water around him.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jimmy Fowler reported that areas surrounding Lake Livingston, northeast of Houston, received up to 23 inches (58 cm) of rain over the past week.

AP News – VOR News Image

Heavy Rains Ease Around Houston But Flooding Remains After Hundreds Of Rescues And Evacuations

A 5-year-old kid died in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, after being carried away after the vehicle he was riding in became caught in swift-moving water near the community of Lillian just before 2 a.m. Sunday, according to officials.

The child and two adults were trying to get to dry land when they were washed away. The adults were rescued and sent to a hospital about 5 a.m., while the infant was discovered dead in the water around 7:20 a.m., according to Johnson County Emergency Management Director Jamie Moore on social media.

According to National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Stalley, storms dumped 9 inches (23 cm) of rain over six to eight hours in areas from central Texas to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Since last week, storms have necessitated multiple high-water rescues in the Houston region, including some from flooded home rooftops.

Greg Moss, 68, stayed in his recreational RV on Sunday after leaving his home in Channelview, east Harris County, near the San Jacinto River. The day before, he had packed up much of his stuff and departed before the road leading to his house flooded.

AP News – VOR News Image

Heavy Rains Ease Around Houston But Flooding Remains After Hundreds Of Rescues And Evacuations

“I would be stuck for four days,” Moss remarked. “So now at least I can go get something to eat.”

Moss relocated his things and vehicle to a neighbor’s home, where he intended to remain until the waters receded. He said Sunday that the floodwaters had already receded by a couple of feet, and Moss was not concerned about his home flooding because it is on higher ground.

SOURCE – (AP)

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Cinco de Mayo Parade in Chicago Cancelled Over Gang Violence

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Chicago Cancelled Cinco de Mayo on May 5: Getty Images

The Cinco de Mayo parade that was scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Chicago has been canceled for safety reasons. The long-running event was scheduled to start near Damen and Cermak at noon in the Little Village neighborhood.

According to FOX 32 the Chicago Police Department, the decision to cancel the event was made by the 10th District, local officials and parade organizers due to gang violence in the area.  Police said multiple arrests were made, including gun arrests.

Many Americans commemorate Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican festival honoring their 1862 victory over France in the Battle of Puebla. Today is September 16, not Mexico’s Independence Day, as many Americans believe.

Why the U.S. celebrates Cinco de Mayo and its beginnings

In the US, Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexican-American culture rather than history. Major celebrations take place in Mexican-populated cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston. Fun includes parades, celebrations, mariachi music, Mexican folk dancing, and traditional dishes and drinks.

Cinco de Mayo celebrates-what? Starting with 1862 battle. Mexican Independence Day (Día de la Independencia) commemorates the country’s independence from Spain on September 16, 1810..

After 50 years, Napoleon III intended to claim Mexico on Cinco de Mayo.

French troops evicted Mexico’s President Benito Juárez and government from Veracruz.At dawn on May 5, 1862, 2,000 Mexican soldiers met 6,000 French troops in Puebla, east-central Mexico.Juárez declared May 5 a national holiday after Mexico declared victory by evening.y.

The battle affected the American Civil War. After the French left North America, the Confederacy couldn’t use them as allies to win.

Despite Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Mexico, especially in Puebla, they pale in comparison to Día de la Independencia, according to García.d.

De Mayo is now a Mexican American holiday

Cinco de Mayo began as a late-19th-century resistance to the Mexican-American War. The Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s popularized the festival.

“It becomes a Chicano holiday, in many ways, linked to the Chicano movement, because we discover Mexicans resisting a foreign invader,” he said.They link Chicano struggle to Cinco de Mayo.”

businesses began commercializing Cinco de Mayo in the 1980s, especially beer businesses and restaurants offering deals and cocktails. García calls it “Corona Day” in jest.”

On Cinco de Mayo, García hopes everyone enjoys Coronas, but with a history lesson to complement..

U.S. events

San Diego: Old Town San Diego will host events May 4 and 5. Live music, folklorico, eating, and drink specials.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Denver hosts a community parade and a taco eating contest on May 4. Denver Civic Center Park will host 10 a.m.–8 p.m. events May 4-5.

St. Paul, Minnesota: One of Minnesota’s major Latino festivals, St. Paul’s West Side de Mayo fiesta. This year’s parade, car, bike, and dog shows will begin at 10 a.m. on May 4.

San Antonio, Texas: From May 4-5, the Historic Market Square will host de Mayo celebrations with live music, Folklorico dancers, Mariachi, food vendors, and more.

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