Zouaves and Cinco de Mayo - TODAY

My last blog post, just a few days ago, included mention of the giant marathon race held in Chicago on 10-10-10.

Well, today is 5-5-15 and that’s enough “5’s” to merit a blog post. Some years ago, our San Antonio based Civil War reenacting group worked as French soldiers in a History Channel’s TV program commemorating the unexpected and widely celebrated Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla on Cinco de Mayo--May 5^th for us gringos—in 1863, right in the middle of our Civil War.

Cinco de Mayo is a big deal in Texas among the growing population of Mexican-Americans. It’s a week-end festival in Lockhart each year, with the town square blocked off and the streets filled with food and beer booths, craft booths, and live music and dancing lasting into the late night.

Most of us without Mexican heritage don’t know that during the same years that the United States was engaged in the insanity of waging war on itself, France had an army in Mexico trying to maintain its colonial grasp on the country.  It was mostly peasants against French regulars, and most of the battles went to the French, except for the Battle of Puebla.

By the way, the French only gave up Mexico after our Civil War ended and our leaders made it clear we had a huge army in the field and all the transport ships and logistics in place to land an army in Mexico to confront the French force there. The big stick thing even before Teddy Roosevelt.

In 2004, ten of us in our San Antonio Civil War reenacting outfit had just acquired Zouave uniforms to portray the 165^th New York Infantry, a regiment that fought in Louisiana at two battles we were reenacting during the 140^th anniversary year of each battle.  

What’s a Zouave, you ask? Answer:  High French Fashion, military style.

Zouave style uniforms were a huge fashion trend in the 1850’s and 1860’s. Originally worn by North African Moroccan troops in French service, the bright red pantaloons, sashes, red decorations on short jackets, and fezzes became popular with other French troops, and the fashion craze quickly crossed the Atlantic.

The militia “clubs” in many large American cities adopted the style, and wore them to their public drill performances. When the Civil War started, those militia companies kept the gaudy uniforms, and soon enough, whole Zouave-attired regiments, rather than individual companies, were formed.

During the French excursion into Mexico in the early 1860’s, four French Zouave regiments were in the force, and their uniforms were just like the ones we had, except for waist sashes being a different color for each regiment. Ours were red, and none of the four French Zouave regiments sashes were red, so we just didn’t wear our red ones during the filming.

The filming took three days and one of the old missions in South San Antonio did duty as the fortress walls at Puebla, Mexico. We scampered up and down stairs and alleys doing our best to make our ten French Zouaves appear to be hundreds. At one point we marched in a circle around the camera man who was on his belly, filming our feet, making it seem a long line of soldiers were marching past him.

We spent one day filming in a field, just four of us Zouaves against a dozen or so Mexican soldiers with muskets and peasants armed with machetes. A smoke machine added atmosphere and the fog of war, as you see in the photo.

All in all, it was great fun for which were paid a decent daily wage. And, in a surprise to me, our parts of the half-hour program aren’t too shabby. We look like Frenchies.  

The History Channel hasn’t shown the program for several years, but maybe late tonight, on Cinco de Mayo, they’ll resurrect it one more time. Meanwhile, I’ll pull out the DVD I bought off their website years ago. I can’t find it there anymore either, since this all happened back in 2004.

So, Happy Cinco de Mayo!