Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Not Another New England Sports Blog! Wishes You a Festive & Happy Cinco de Mayo

Gil Elvgren
The word 'diversity' often gets thrown around by smarmy, agenda-driven morons to the point where it's meaningless, but one of my few gripes about the vintage pin-ups from back in the postwar-era was the apparent lack of.....wait for it....ethnic diversity.

Now, granted attitudes about race along with the demographics and marketing strategies were different back in the day. But would companies like Barbasol or Sylvania featured some sort of massive backlash from the public if the artwork in their ads featured an occasional Asian beauty, sultry Latina or ebony bombshell?

But with that said, there's this gem titled A Pleasant Sight to Si courtesy of the incomparable Gil Elvgren. This 1969 work was published some 107 years after outnumbered and outgunned Mexican forces clashed with a better equipped and numerically superior invading Napoleonic French Army that had occupied Veracruz and was advancing towards Mexico City at the Battle of Puebla.
Interestingly, Cinco De Mayo isn't celebrated in Mexico very much outside the state of Puebla, although it has clearly caught on North of the Border. Also, the May 5th Battle of Puebla does not mark Mexico's Independence Day- that actually takes place in mid-September. Apparently May 5th is the only acceptable day to drink a Corona beer as well, which suits me just fine.

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