Cinco de Mayo is a start

People from Mexico are often surprised to see all the emphasis on Cinco de Mayo here. The "Fifth of May" may indeed be a Mexican holiday, but down south it's not in a league with Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day. In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Battle of Puebla, when the Mexicans drove the French from their door. The day is important, though not monumental.

It is, however, in the United States.

And the reason is simple.

Since Cinco de Mayo is not the independence day of any one Latin American nation, all nationalities can embrace it. In a sense, Cinco de Mayo is "Hispanic Day," a day for celebrating shared heritage, shared history, shared language and, in many cases, shared dreams.

It is also the one day each year that magazines, newspapers, television stations, churches, schools, businesses and many other institutions have set aside to showcase citizens with a Latino heritage.

And that is well and good.

What would be better, however, is if America's growing corps of citizens from Mexico, Guatemala and all points south were integrated more fully into the news of each day. More familiarity may breed more acceptance.

Feelings run high about the rapid influx of immigrants from Latin America. Some here welcome the infusion, seeing it as fresh blood for the American culture. Others are skeptical. Some are downright hostile. For those who feel threatened, in fact, an old truism may come into play: We demonize what we don't understand.

Showcasing the faces and places of American Hispanics more often and in better ways would go a long way to defuse ugly culture clashes before they occur.

For, in the end, the truth is that Americans of every stripe love and want the same things.

Americans love freedom.

They love and fret over their families and want security for them.

They don't shy away from labor.

They know personal initiative is the grease that makes the system work.

And that holds for Mexican-Americans, French-Americans, Russian-Americans and Martian-Americans. They are the self-evident truths people from other lands have seen from afar and have run to embrace.

For the moment, Cinco de Mayo showcases Latinos as a group, as one of the blocks in the American quilt.

The hope is that, in time, those blocks can be broken down into individual color, shape and size.

The hope is that, one day, all Americans will see each other as merely Americans.

And that day will signal a true independence day — for America.