Starting in Caracas and Buenos Aires, criollos set up governing juntas across the Americas.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Freeing Spanish America

But by 1890, the grandchildren of the veterans and juntas had to be taught about Cinco de Mayo, Hayes-Bautista said.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Uniquely, Argentina not only appointed a truth commission which identified killers and torturers, but jailed the leaders of the military juntas themselves.

ECONOMIST: Latin American dictatorships��and after

In a democracy like Thailand, of course, it is not military juntas or multilateral agencies that are supposed to perform that function, but voters.

CNN: The Politics, Stupid

The Cinco de Mayo victory was then memorialized through a network of Latino groups called "juntas patrioticas mejicanas, " or Mexican patriotic assemblies, mostly in California but also in Oregon, Nevada and Arizona, with 14, 000 members, Hayes-Bautista said.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS