Elizabeth Martinez, age 11, of Santa Cruz, Calif. for her question:

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE CELEBRATE CINCO DE MAYO?

Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that is observed by many Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Translated in English, the name is Fifth of May. The holiday honors the Mexican army's victory over an invading French force at Puebla, Mexico, in 1862.

Cinco de Mayo offers Mexicans a chance to celebrate with a colorful fiesta, or festival. Mexico's most important celebration, by the way, is Independence Day on Sept. 16. This holiday, like Cinco de Mayo, is also observed with a fiesta.

Most fiestas start before daylight with a shower of rockets, loud explosions of fireworks and ringing of bells. During the fiestas, the people pray and burn candles to their saints in churches decorated with flowers and colored tissue paper. They dance, gamble, hold parades and buy refreshments in the crowded public squares. Fireworks are again set off at night.

In larger towns, fiestas resemble carnivals or county fairs in the United States. Most of them include less religious worship than do the village fiestas.