Getting date month in english format inside bash script

Question

In a bash script I have the following:

MES=$(date +"%b")

How can I get the month in english format?

Now if I echo $MES variable, I get abr. But I would like to get apr.

I'm trying to solve this without using if statement or switch. May be is an option...
I have tried date -u but is not working for me.

EDIT:
Finally I have put this line in the first line of script script:

#!/bin/bash
LANG=en_us_8859_1 
# Here rest of the script

Now is working, but I can't accept my own answer as valid... I think because I haven't enough reputation in stackoverflow

Answer 1

Use

MES=$(LANG=en_us_88591; date +"%b")

to change the language just for this single call.