All societies and individuals possess, consciously and unconsciously, a lexicon of myths. Historically, most youngsters embrace a central myth of youth — they are invincible — apart from their societies’ widely held concepts of immortality in various forms. Some myths come from a dense pre-historic past.
In Western cultures other myths are made immortal themselves by Greek, Latin and biblical literature. While a great many people today believe myths are no longer useful, they operate in cultures that deny them while subliminally utilizing them. The iconic “modern” example of course is George Lucas’ artful use of Goethe’s instructive Faust myth in “Star Wars” and its myriad cultural offspring about the universal hero. And in our modern midst are judges clad not in business suits, but draped in “magisterial” robes straight out Greek mythology and time. If being a judge in modern society were considered a mere “role,” the garb would be a CEO’s pin-stripe suit. “For law to hold authority beyond mere coercion, the power of a judge must be ritualized, mythologized. As does much of modern life today, from religion and war to love and death,” one cultural analyst has pointed out.
For 60 years, El Dia de los Niños Heroes, September 13, has been a popular (once official, now unofficial) national celebration. It marks the deaths of six young cadets in defense of Mexico City at the end of what Mexicans call “The American War” of 1846-48. It’s a ritual that many Mexican historians call a “legend,” the kind of myth that all nations wish to retain not relinquish.
It was no secret to the educated that the Mexican Army, commanded by the infamous General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, performed embarrassingly in 1846-48. For good reason. Santa Anna’s forces were indifferently recruited, untrained, poorly supplied, and atrociously commanded.
In 1982-83, Mexican historian, author, journalist and magazine editor, Armando Ayala Anguiano, subjected the Niños Hereos story to keen examination. In a comprehensive treatise in his “Contenido” magazine, he suggested that the “history” of the child heroes grew not out of battlefield facts but out of what he termed the need of a defeated Mexico to salvage self-respect from a defense of Mexico that was scandalously conducted from its beginning.
The legend is stirring, flourishing in equal parts bravery and tragedy. United States General Winfield Scott sought to end the war which began in Texas (a break-away republic from Mexico, 1836-1846) when the Mexican army clashed with and captured a U.S. patrol. Now at the outskirts of Mexico City in September 1847, Scott needed to capture the fort on Chapultepec Hill, the entrance to Mexico City. The fort was the site of Mexico’s underfunded military academy. Santa Anna, who had a sulfurous record of plundering the nation repeatedly as its leader, vacillated before finally assigning the defense of the Hill in good part to the Academy’s young cadets.Outmanned, outgunned, outgeneraled, the cadets defended the Hill fiercely, tradition says. As U.S. troops pushed up Chapultepec Hill, cadet Juan Escutia, seeing resistance futile, grabbed the Mexican flag to keep it from enemy hands. Wounded, he wrapped himself in the banner and flung himself to rocks below. Five other cadets died in the battle.
This romantic moment of youthful bravery has been celebrated more than a million times across the Republic to mark Mexico’s courage in a war that ended in defeat. Innumerable Mexican orators have reiterated the tale, calling the fallen cadets “the cleanest heros of our national history.”
In the 1980s Ayala, already an author of two books of Mexican history, took this legend into the rough terrain of the battlefield, first-hand history, contemporary war reports and correspondence. Chapultepec Hill, he found, was supposed to be defended by General Nicolas Bravo (whose name ornaments central streets in every pueblo, town and city in the Republic) with nearly 2,000 soldiers and about 60 cadets. Half of his men began deserting at the sound of yanqui artillery. Bravo, himself, panicked and hid in a trench. Among those who stayed to defend the Hill, were 64 officers and cadets of the military academy.
One of the cadets among the six had died two days before Scott’s concentrated attack on Chapultepec Hill. Ayala found no evidence that any of the cadets committed suicide, which, he noted, could not be interpreted as a heroic act in the face of enemy fire. No Mexican or U.S. commanders at the Chapultepec encounter mentioned the cadets in their dispatches. And the “definitive” 1848 Mexican history of the war, providing the Mexican view of the conflict, mentioned no incident similar to the later legend. Ayala could find no contemporary references at all. The six cadets, he discovered, “evidently were no braver than any other Mexican soldiers who stayed and died in battle.” The editor-historian notes that the casualty rate on Chapultepec Hill provides no evidence of any exceptional bravery. The academy corps suffered 15-percent casualties; besides the six that died, three were wounded. He noted that in the 1800s U.S. and European armies customarily neither surrendered nor fled until they suffered at least 30 percent casualties. With a casualty rate of 15 percent, the surrender of the cadets “was hardly acceptable, but in contrast to the cowardice of General Bravo (who deserted), their relative bravery soon acquired the features of an epic poem,” Ayala wrote.
“(W)ith the passage of time the shame of what happened in the American-Mexican War became unsupportable, not only to soldiers who lost it, but to all Mexicans.” “In a well-integrated nation, the normal reaction would have been to get rid of the corruption that was the principal cause of the defeat, but in the unfortunate Mexico of that time, the only thing done was to forge fables and invent heroic facts to sweeten the bitterness of reality.”
By the late 1800s, alumni of the military academy were meeting yearly to honor the cadets. “Each year, the fervor of orators grew,” Ayala wrote. Then a general referred to the cadets as “almost children.” Soon the “almost” was dropped; they became “los niños heroes” — child heroes. (One of the dead was 13 years old. The others “ranged from 17 to 21.” At that time most of Mexico’s children went to work at five; 16 and 17 year olds were considered men; their average life expectancy was short. Mexican life expectancy did not reach 30-37 years until the 1930s.)
Meanwhile, skepticism among historians grew. In 1947, 100 years after the battle, Mexican Army Colonel Manuel J. Solis was assigned to locating the remains of the cadets. He speculated (waywardly) that the United States commission which, in 1850, had collected U.S. dead to bury them with honor, buried the cadets in a common grave on the Hill. After some search, Solis found a grave containing six skeletons. These were, without documentation or scientific investigation, officially declared the remains of the child heroes, and, in 1952, placed in the six columns of the enormous monument in Chapultepec Park.
(This is the first of a two-part series.)