Cinco de Mayo is a date that commemorates the Battle of Puebla, Mexico of 1862 in which the Mexican troops triumphed over the French army. 

To understand this date better it is necessary to understand a little of the history of Mexico.  In 1821 Mexico gained independence from Spain. However, the Mexican government had incurred large debts with France among other European countries during the wars of 1846-48 (with the United States) and 1860 (a civil war). Mexico could not pay its debts immediately and in response, the French government sent its troops to Mexico to establish its own monarchical government.  To reach the city of Mexico the troops had to pass through Puebla, a city two hours east of Mexico City. In Puebla, General Zaragoza and his Mexican troops managed to defeat the French army on May 5th giving rise to the name of this holiday. This was achieved even though the French were much more numerous.  Today Cinco de Mayo is celebrated with military parades called desfiles and a lot of food, songs and dancing. Many traditional Mexican dishes are also served such as tamales. People also wear traditional clothes and at night there are fireworks. In recent years, Cinco de Mayo has become very popular in the United States as a general celebration of democracy, patriotism and latin culture.

My long-time dream came true this fall when I was able to visit Andalucía, Spain. The region has always attracted me with its wonderful history,  warm weather,  beaches, Mediterranean food, Pablo Picasso and other famous artists and especially the laid-back life style of the people.

It is both the most populated (8.4 million) and the most southern autonomous community in the kingdom of Spain (reino de España). It is also the only European region which has both an Atlantic and Mediterranean coastline. Over 70%  of its over 500 miles of coastline feature sandy beaches (playas), making it a very popular destination for tourists. Some of which stay in Andalucía for several months as the weather stays all year round sunny and warm.

Some of the cities to visit are Málaga, Sevilla, Granada, Marbella, Torremolinos, Benalmádena and Cádiz. Sevilla (Seville) is the capital of Andalucía. It is also one of the warmest cities in Europe reaching temperatures over 40C in the summer. I especially enjoyed Málaga, home town of Pablo Picasso. This city’s biggest landmark is the Castle (Castillo) de Gibralfaro which dates back to the 14^th century with some stunning views (vistas) over the city. Also the Cathedral, Port (Puerto) de Málaga, Museum (Museo) Picasso and Constitution Square (Plaza de Constitución) are must see places.

The Spanish lifestyle calls you to stay up late into the evenings when people gather in the restaurants or coffee houses (cafés) to eat tapas or to drink hot chocolate and eat churros (fried dough pastries). Tapas (a variety of appetizers or snacks) are said to have originated in Andalucía. Popular tapas in all of Spain include shrimp, fried squid, cured ham, chorizo (spicy Spanish sausage), and potato omelettes (tortillas).

Table full of mediterranean appetizers, tapas or antipasto

The most enchanting feature of this region is the Moorish past, which has influenced the famous flamenco dance. The authentic flamenco song, sung a cappella (without musical accompaniment), is the cante jondo, an anguished lament expressing love, sadness, and loss.

Meria (Nina’s mom)

Eva Perón was born María Eva Duarte in 1919 in a small village in Argentina. Her early life was difficult because her mother was the mistress of her already married father. During her life, he failed to recognize her as his legitimate daughter. From a young age, Eva was interested in dancing, acting and modeling and at 16 she moved on her own to the capital city of Buenos Aires. It was her dream to be a cinema star. She was a very attractive young woman and was soon turning heads in the capital city. She received work immediately and began traveling in the upper social circles of the city shortly thereafter.

In 1943, Eva met an ambitious politician by the name of Juan Perón at a party. They had a two-year courtship and married in 1945. Eva was a guiding force behind his election campaign to become president in 1946. Given her poor childhood, she had a strong connection to the working classes. She was also a very charismatic speaker. The two of them were very popular and due to her diminutive size she became known as Evita or ‘little Eva’ by the people. During her time as first lady she helped women in Argentina obtain the right to vote in 1947. She also created many social foundations to combat poverty, help orphaned children, the elderly and single mothers as this cause was close to her heart.

It should be mentioned that Eva had her detractors as well.  Some decried her to be a hypocrite as while she was doing all of this charity work she was well known for her excesses. Having grown up poor, she very much enjoyed the privileges that came along with her newfound status. She wore very expensive clothes and was known for having an enormous jewelry collection.

During Perón’s second campaign for presidency in 1951, Eva became very ill with ovarian cancer. By a cruel twist of fate, the president’s first wife had also died of this cancer. In a desperate attempt to save her life, the president flew in specialists and Evita was one of the first people in South America to receive the then new treatment of chemotherapy.  Unfortunately, the tumor had been discovered too late and she died the following year.

Throughout the final months of her life she campaigned tirelessly by her husband’s side, knowing that her image would help her husband win  reelection. Upon her death, there was an outpouring of emotion from the Argentinian public. In order to immortalize her image, Perón hired a doctor who began to embalm her body in her final days so that by the time the cancer had claimed her she would be completely preserved and would not suffer any decomposition.

After her death, Perón was thrown out of government and had to flee the country leaving behind her body. A lot of controversy surrounds what happened to the body over the next few months and years. For a time it was stored in various places in Argentina and eventually made its way to Italy before finally being returned to Buenos Aires many years later. Today her final resting place is the Duarte family crypt in La Recoleta, a well-known cemetery in Buenos Aires. Many tourists and locals visit her to every day especially on the days commemorating her birth and death.

The well-known song, “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” was immortalized by Madonna’s performance in the 1996 film Evita. To see the performance click here. The film is a musical which outlines Eva’s life with Perón.

Speak: a short history of languages, was written by Tore Janson, a Swedish linguistics and language professor. The book uncovers the history of how the world’s languages have evolved over the years from prehistory through to modern day touching on the earliest civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe. The book gives a good overview of the world’s large language groupings and explains how languages go from being spoken in small isolated areas, to becoming the majority or ‘big language’ of a large number of speakers.

I especially enjoyed Chapter 2 titled The Large Language Groups, which focuses on the histories of Germanic, Slavic, Romance and Bantu languages. The author describes how Bantu, a grouping of Southern African languages, was comprised of a number of scattered speakers as recently as 3000 years ago but with the development of farming there was a massive expansion in population and an increase in settlement throughout the southern half of the African continent. Currently there are about 180 million speakers of an approximate 300-600 Bantu languages of which only the major ones such as Swahili, Zulu and Xhosa are well known to outsiders.

In Chapter 11, How Languages Disappear, Janson discusses the various reasons why languages die out. The author makes a point of saying that most languages undergo a slow death rather than a rapid decline. Generally this occurs as over a number of generations another language comes to prominence in a given area, as knowledge of a more largely spoken language becomes more economically important. Globalization in general is causing large shifts in the use of language throughout the world with more and more people speaking one of the world’s major languages in addition to their local dialect. In future, these local dialects may be seen as unnecessary and die off as has happened with many indigenous languages around the world.

Currently there are between 6000 and 7000 languages in use globally, but Janson hypothesizes there may be as few as half as many within 100 years. He states, “the 60 largest languages, in terms of numbers of speakers, share more than 4 billion speakers among themselves. That is, about 1% of the [world’s] languages are used by about 75% of the speakers.” The breakdown of the number of languages per continent is roughly: Africa 30% of the world’s total with 2000 languages, the Americas at 15% with 1000 languages, Asia at 32% with 2200 languages, Europe at 3% with 230 languages, the Pacific at 19% with 1300 languages including the island of New Guinea with an estimated 1000 languages alone!

In the final chapters, the author hypothesizes what the language situation on earth may be in 200, 2000 or 2 million years. I have often wondered about the future of languages. No doubt, the English spoken far in the future will be nearly unrecognizable to today’s English as languages are always changing as long as they are in use. It is hard to visualize this as a learner or speaker of a modern language as the changes happen so slowly as to be easily overlooked in one or two generations. Nevertheless, if you pick up a book written a mere 200 years ago there will be a lot of grammatical structures and phrases unfamiliar to the modern speaker.