Every year, as the weather warmed, hundreds of people would transform a lot in south Philadelphia into a frenetic re-enactment of their ancestors’ glory: the great battle of May 5, 1862, when the Mexican army defeated French invaders.<\/p>\n
Revelers would squeeze onto the grass between low-slung apartment blocks, dancing beneath a colorful explosion of muskets, flags, feathers and masks.<\/p>\n
No one re-enacted the subsequent battle of 1863 – when the French came back, won and occupied Mexico.<\/p>\n
This year, they won’t be celebrating anything.<\/p>\n
After immigration raids across the country and reports of White House deportation plans, Philadelphia’s largest Cinco de Mayo celebration has been canceled.<\/p>\n
“Everyone’s pretty much afraid because they’re saying that, basically, ICE is just going to come in out of nowhere,” resident Florencia Gonzalez told NBC 10 on a quiet, wet street that El Carnaval de Puebla used to fill in late April.<\/p>\n
Even Mayor Jim Kenney was bummed. “I’m devastated to hear that ICE has had such a chilling effect that Philadelphians no longer feel comfortable engaging in this public celebration,” he told the news station.<\/p>\n
An ICE official told the station that the agency “does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately.”<\/p>\n
But many immigrants have been in a state of panic after news of operations such as a nationwide sweep that detained 700 people in one day or the public arrest of a Los Angeles man near his daughter’s school.<\/p>\n
And after promising during the 2016 campaign to deport millions of people who were in the country illegally, Trump’s administration has proposed hiring thousands of new immigration agents, building a border wall and speeding up removals.<\/p>\n
An organizer told NBC 10 that up to 15,000 people used to watch the festival in years past, as hundreds of marchers paraded through south Philadelphia’s streets.<\/p>\n
“We have people who travel all the way from Chicago, Connecticut and New York,” Edgar Ramirez said. “We don’t want anything to happen to them.”<\/p>\n
So organizers unanimously decided to cancel.<\/p>\n
An official with the Mexican Consulate tried to calm the community’s fears, NBC reported.<\/p>\n
A carnival founder told Al D\u00eda News that the cancellation was not strictly a matter of caution – but also meant to “raise a voice of protest” against the White House’s immigration policies.<\/p>\n
In any event, as this year’s anniversary of the Battle of Puebla rolls around, an empty city block will remain just that.<\/p>\n
(c) 2017, The Washington Post \u00b7 Avi Selk<\/span>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every year, as the weather warmed, hundreds of people would transform a lot in south Philadelphia into a frenetic re-enactment of their ancestors’ glory: the great battle of May 5, 1862, when the Mexican army defeated French invaders. Revelers would squeeze onto the grass between low-slung apartment blocks, dancing beneath a colorful explosion of muskets, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5409,"featured_media":102690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[54,36,4533,37],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n