NOGALES, Mexico — It's May 5th. And in Tucson, Ariz., the cover of the Arizona Daily Star is ablaze with Mexican colors.

The new Cinco de Mayo Barbie doll, decked out to the Mexican nines, offers a quick tour of the city's events in the paper's feature section: A 10K run, a photo exhibit, dining delights, music, shopping bargains and pet sales.

It's enough to wear a body out and drive a more serene soul to search for a country where Cinco de Mayo is hardly on the radar.

A place, say, like Mexico.

South of the border, here in Nogales, the newspapers don't even mention Cinco de Mayo. The news here is Paris Hilton, the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight and some nasty business about a triple murder.

Mexico's Mule Day gets more press than Cinco de Mayo.

"We celebrate it, but not like they do in the United States," said Czarina de Montano, whose trendy boutique, El Serape, turns 65 this year. "But I see Cinco de Mayo making a comeback."

The reason Hispanics in the United States have embraced Cinco de Mayo is up for debate. Since May 5th is simply a day to commemorate a battle, not Mexican Independence Day, people of other Latin nations have been able to embrace it without feeling like traitors to their own home countries. Also, fierce nationalism, at the moment, would not be good politics for Hispanics looking to blend in.

Besides, as Tucson's Daily Star points out, Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of the underdog — the day Mexican peasants, armed with proverbial pitchforks, sent the French army packing. The French later prevailed, but not before May 5th became a national celebration.

Cinco de Mayo has always had cachet in Puebla, Mexico, site of the famous battle, but now Mexican border towns are beginning to resurrect it as well. La Roca, for instance, the top restaurant in Nogales, once sponsored major festivities. This year, for the first time in years, the big celebration is again afoot.

"There's a new sense of the day that's trying to catch on," said Pancho Villegas, a street vendor. "I think all the interest in the United States might well be fueling interest here."

If so, it would be a supreme irony: a Mexican holiday, adopted by the United States, getting rebooted and revitalized and then sold back to Mexico.

But that's pretty much par for the course. It all sounds so American.

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E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com