MEXICO: 100 Years After

• Share

In the villages and cities of Mexico, men & women gathered last week for memorial masses, speeches, toasts, parades, Mexicans were honoring their defenders against the U.S., which, just 100 years ago, invaded the country in the name of "manifest destiny." The highest tributes were reserved for Los Niñs Heroes—the five teen-age cadets and their instructor who (legend says) threw themselves over the cliff at Chapultepec Castle rather than surrender to General Winfield Scott's U.S. troops in the war's climactic battle.

Mexicans crowded Mexico City's cypress-shaded Chapultepec Park to mark the 100th anniversary of Los Niños Heroes. Even after President Truman's popular gesture in visiting Los Niños monument last March, it was a touchy moment. Some Americans and Mexicans thought that to send West Point cadets to last week's ceremony was a big mistake.

The rocky cliff was jammed with people hanging from every outcropping. At the foot, President Miguel Aleman stepped forward to lay a wreath. Then, one by one, cadet delegations from 16 hemisphere countries marched into the little enclosure, saluted, marched out. There was applause for the Brazilians, the Argentines, the Colombians. Then applause grew louder. It became a roar. High on the cliffside, men shouted "Hi! Hi! Hi!" It had been no mistake after all. Next to cadets from their own Colegio Militar, Mexicans had given the five white-uniformed West Pointers the biggest hand of all.