Politics & Power Quote by Joe Baca

Cinco de Mayo is doing diplomatic work here: Joe Baca reframes a date most Americans encounter as beer-brand branding into a civics lesson about belonging. As a politician speaking into a culture war over immigration, language, and who gets to claim “American,” he’s not interested in the holiday’s messy historical specificity. He’s interested in what the holiday can be made to mean on U.S. soil: a public, legible moment when Mexican American life isn’t treated as a “special interest,” but as part of the national story.

The phrasing is deliberately expansive and slightly slippery. “Has come to represent” sidesteps arguments about accuracy (it’s not Mexican Independence Day) and shifts authority to lived practice: whatever historians say, the holiday’s current social function is what counts. “Contributions” is the safest possible frame for multicultural recognition in American politics, because it asks for praise without demanding structural change. It nudges celebration away from grievance and toward merit, work, culture, service. At the same time, it quietly pushes back on suspicion: if you’re contributing, you’re invested; if you’re invested, you belong.

Then there’s the coalition-building move: “Mexican Americans and all Hispanics.” Cinco de Mayo is specifically Mexican in origin, but Baca widens the circle to a pan-ethnic umbrella that maps better onto U.S. electoral reality and civil-rights organizing. The subtext is clear: treat this as an American holiday of recognition, not an exotic theme night. Celebration becomes a claim to citizenship, performed in public.