I know what you are thinking. You keep thinking that the fatidic date – Cinco de Mayo --  being celebrated today has something to do with Napoleon, and Spain, and the Peninsular Campaign. You keep thinking that a certain painting by Goya showing a firing-squad and its victims is a painting which you are convinced is called "Cinco de Mayo." And that misremembered "Cinco" of that hazily-remembered painting becomes further imprinted on your brain by a snatch of Garcia Lorca, from what is  practically the only poem, or only bit of a poem, in Spanish that, admit, you can remember -- the one about the death, from a goring, of matador Angel Mejía Sánchez, in the bullring at Manzanares, in 1934, a poem (Llanto por Angel Mejía Sánchez)  which takes as its haunting refrain the phrase “a las cinco de la tarde," which, according to the poem was the precise time of the matador’s death:  "Lo demás era muerte y sólo muerte/A las cinco de la tarde."

So what a surprise it is to discover that the painting by Goya is called "The Third of May."

And what a surprise, as well, to discover that the Cinco de Mayo celebration has nothing to do with French troops in Spain, but rather with French troops in Mexico, and the Battle of Puebla, in 1862, in which the French were defeated by the Mexican army -- thanks to the assistance given by the Tlaxcaltecas, from nearby Tlaxcala, rather than from the locals, the Poblanos, themselves. But it was a hollow victory, because in the end the French won, and installed as Emperor their man Maximilian, a Hapsburg far from home and out of his depth.

Five years later, that hapless Hapsburg was shot, along with two of his generals, by a Mexican  firing squad, a scene immortalized in a painting by Manet. One of the generals was named Mejia. Maximilian is reported to have said to his valet (perhaps his valet said to him – I can never remember) “You said it would not come to this. You see that you were wrong.”

So there is not one patibulo-painting in this tale, but two. And the painting by Manet was influenced by the painting by Goyal. But neither painting is about an event that took place on the fifth of May, neither one has directly to do, but both have something in our collective memories to do, with the Cinco-de-Mayo celebration, and no doubt many of those celebrating assume that a famous execution, by firing-squad, took place on the Fifth of May, in some country – Spain, Mexico – where Spanish is spoken.

Nor does the Goya-theme end here. Nowadays, in Los Angeles, in San Diego, in Houston, in Phoenix,  in New York and Philadelphia and even, now, in such places as Charlotte -- no relation to Carlota, consort of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico – in the south of North Carolina, the name of Goya comes up again, every Cinco de Mayo. Not the painter, not the desastres-de-la-guerra fellow who influenced Manet not  the one to whom the Mexican artist Posada owes something, but rather, the giant food company Goya, that spreads out in supermarkets, for Cinco de Mayo spreads all over the Colossus of the North, its taquitos, its tortillas, its sofrito, its mole poblano, its habichuelas, its chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.

So today we can fleetingly honor Maxmilian by repeating his words: You see that you were wrong.