Father meant, los niños heroes, the six young military cadets who refused to give up the fight against the invading Americans when the rest of the country had either laid down arms or, worse yet, connived with the invader.
On 13 September 1847, with the Mexican Army in rout, the last impediment to General Scott's taking of the capital was the military academy in el castillo atop the commanding Chapultepec Hill, defended by perhaps 600 regulars at the base of the hill and 400 cadets in the castle itself standing against 5,000 U.S. troops. Murderous artillery made short shrift of the regulars and by mid-morning swarms of American troops began scaling the castle walls.
A certain amount of legend and lore has surrounded los niños heroes, the most common of which is that last surviving six cadets retreated to the last parapet where they compacted suicide, after which the last of them, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and jumped to his death. The truth was a little more prosaic but no less heroic. Four of the cadets died in combat, a fifth was wounded and taken prisoner. But there is no question that, surrounded on all sides, Escutia retreated to the ballustrade where flag in hand, he leaped.
Thermopylae, Massada, the Alamo, and Los Niños Heroes are among history's few instances of unalloyed heroism and in Mexico, so often the scene of duplicity and treason, the boy cadets are universally given the somber reverence that is their due.
It was therefore, not particulary appreciated, when mother remarked that the monument to Los Niños rather looked like six giant stalks of asparagus, which of course they do, especially once the bronze caps which were supposed to represent flames had oxidized. I certainly respect the heroism of the boy cadets but, thanks to mother's unsparing wit, their monument will always stand as an example of overworked patriotism.
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