Object description

The Obelisco a los Niños Héroes is a monument installed in Chapultepec, Mexico City. The cenotaph was created in 1881 by architect Ramón Rodríguez Arangoity, one of the cadets captured in the Battle of Chapultepec. The marble cenotaph was a typical nineteenth-century monument. This one lists the names of the six cadets, the Niños Héroes, killed in the fierce fighting in the Mexican-American War as military cadets defended as well as the 40 who survived the attack. For his own political purposes, General Porfirio Díaz inaugurated the monument with a military and civilian audience of dignitaries. Subsequently, the obelisk became an annual site of remembrance for the Association of the Military College, a group of veterans who had been cadets. This modest-sized monument was superseded in 1952 by the massive Monumento a los Niños Héroes.