CINCO de MAYO and NATIONAL NURSES DAY
Carlos Castenada la Paz CPW News Service
In 1974, Richard Nixon declared National Nurse Week to begin
on May 6th and ending on May 12th, Florence Nightengale’s
birthday….seven days in May.
Beginning with the Chicano movement of the 1970’s there has
been a conscious effort particularly among Latins in the American Southwest to
incorporate the 5th of May into the nursing week celebration.
On the 5th of May in 1862 as the U.S. was locked in a Civil War
that uncivilly killed 600,000 soldiers,
France saw an opportunity to annex Mexico. The Mexican General born at La Bahia in Goliad, Texas
in 1829, Ignatio Seguin Zaragoza, repelled the French with about 80 Mexican deaths and
1000 French soldiers killed.
While the U.S. owed its liberation from Britain to the
assistance of the French who later sold the U.S. the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million,
the deaths of 601,080 killed in the combined U.S., Mexican and French battles
of the 1860’s has little to do with the values that nurses pursue according to Maude
Souchers, RN of Hopewell, New Mexico. Souchers is President of Nurses Against the Racket of War.
“Florence Nightingale believed that murderous warfare was
detrimental to human health and to latch the nursing agenda to a celebration of
warfare, U.S. , French, Mexican, Inca or Celtic is total bull sxxx,” said
Souchers.
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