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• Simon Maxwell Apter

  Maximilian’s Ghost

  Tags:

  Cinco de Mayo,

  football,

  France,

  Habsburgs,

  Mexico,

  soccer,

  World Cup

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  Mexico defeated a listless and bored-looking France 2-0 yesterday. With the win, El Tri is all but ticketed for the second round and Les Bleus, who haven’t scored a goal in two full games this World Cup, look likely to be sent home after group play. In 2002, France staged an equally bad showing, the centerpiece of which was a shocking 1-0 loss to Senegal, a former French colony. The loss to Mexico could be deemed a similar defeat.

  Many Americans relate to our Hispanophone neighbors to the south via Corona, Cuervo, and Cinco de Mayo, with little regard paid to actual Mexican history. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, as both brands are passable, mid-priced adult beverages, and any chance Americans get to learn even a few words of Spanish is a much-needed spell for our language program-cutting public schools. Nevertheless, due to the formidable marketing machines of those particular Mexican brands of booze, many of us treat May 5th as a Latino version of our own July 4th, which any Mexican will tell you it decidedly is not. The holiday celebrates the Mexican military victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. There isn’t an equivalent American event, although the War of 1812’s Battle of New Orleans against Britain might come close. So, in one of the World Cup’s more obscure pairings of historical bedfellows, Thursday’s game between France and Mexico is—like Portugal vs. Brazil and England vs. the United States—a matchup between erstwhile occupier and occupied states.

  Between 1864 and 1867, the hastily convened Second Mexican Empire was a subject of France, ruled by Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I. (Most countries, including the United States, did not recognize the new government’s legitimacy.) Conservative Mexicans, known for a distinctive Francophilia and a desire to return Mexico to monarchy, had actually brought Maximilian (himself an Austrian) to the New World; liberals in turn coalesced around Benito Juárez, the Mexican president whose administration had been interrupted by the arrival of the French.

  Maximilian’s reign was marked by constant conflict, haplessness, and the increasing insanity of his Belgian wife, Charlotte. When his boss, Napoleon III, determined that the French adventure in Mexico had become an unsuccessful boondoggle and withdrew his troops, Maximilian refused to follow suit, citing loyalty to his conservative supporters and to their notion of an Imperial Mexico. Interestingly, Maximiliano I, as he was known, was a fairly liberal emperor who might have done the Mexican lower classes some good, had they not detested the fact that he was a foreign interloper. Juárez’s Republicans rooted out the empire in 1867, Maximilian was executed by firing squad, and Juárez would go on to become Mexican history’s greatest hero.

  Unlike the choler unleashed when the Germans meet one of European countries against whom they fought a world war or two, there isn’t a lot of vitriol surrounding the French-Mexican “rivalry.” Mexico, of course, saves its venom for its other, more recent (and unofficial) imperial occupier, the United States, and the French savor a victory over the Germans more than a win over a Latin American nation (their 3-0 win in the 1998 World Cup Final against Brazil notwithstanding). Yet like Napoleon III, who felt that takeover of Mexico could bolster his empire, the French approached this soccer game against El Tri with a similar attitude. Aging stars, internal discord, and subpar play—all on display in last week’s 0-0 tie against Uruguay—have brought a note of desperation to the French side, who last tasted glory in 2000 when they won the European Championship. Mexico, itself humbled by its surprising 1-1 tie with South Africa in the tournament’s opening match, came into this latter-day Battle of Puebla with the opportunity to reassert its legitimacy as a soccer power; who better to do it against than the majesty of Les Bleus?

  June 18, 2010
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