Monument to Cuauhtémoc
Front view of the top section of the statue
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 Location in central/western Mexico City
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| Coordinates | 19°25′52″N 99°09′32″W / 19.4311°N 99.1589°WCoordinates: 19°25′52″N 99°09′32″W / 19.4311°N 99.1589°W |
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| Location |
Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City 
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| Designer | Francisco Jiménez, Ramón Agea, Miguel Noreña |
| Width | 6.20 x 6.20 m (base) |
| Height | 4.93 metres (16.2 ft) (sculpture) 11.75 metres (38.5 ft) (base) |
| Beginning date | 1878 |
| Completion date | 1887 |
| Opening date | 21 August 1887 |
| Dedicated to | Cuauhtémoc |
The Monument to Cuauhtémoc is an 1887 statue dedicated to the last Mexica ruler (tlatoani) of Tenochtitlan Cuauhtémoc, located at the intersection of Avenida de los Insurgentes and Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. It is the work of Francisco Jimenez and Miguel Noreña in the "neoindigenismo" (academic indigenismo style), and was proposed to promote the new government of Porfirio Diaz.
The construction of the monument was part of a nationalist discourse, promoted through a program of public sculpture and an expansion of the Paseo de la Reforma. Its construction occurred subsequent to the monument to Christopher Columbus, located at the next intersection of the same street, and in contrast to it, as an attempt to highlight the mestizo (mixed origin) identity of contemporary Mexico. It is also deliberately made in the same scale as monuments celebrating national heroes from the 19th Century Mexican War of Independence. Alongside the Mexico Pavilion at the 1889 Paris exhibition by Antonio Anza, the monument was part of a failed search for a purely Mexican artistic style.
The monument to Cuauhtémoc was created on the initiative of Vicente Riva Palacio who proposed to promote the "Porfiriato" regime of president Porfirio Díaz with a monument to honour the last of the Mexica rulers. To do this, in 1877 D.J.S. Bagally, Emilio Dondé, Manuel Gargollo y Parra and Ramón Rodríguez Arangoyti were convened as judges for a public competition. The winners was engineer Francisco M. Jiménez who were inspired by the details of prehispanic Mexican architecture, such as the ancient buildings of Uxmal, Mitla and the archaeological site of Palenque, among others. Jimenez died two days after the decision was announced therefore the construction of the monument was overseen by Ramón Agea, architect and engineer of the National Palace of Mexico. The Minister of public works, Carlos Pacheco Villalobos, then commissioned Miguel Noreña for sculptures on the monument at a cost of 37,863 pesos. 3 thousand was later added to the cost for the bronze leopards around the base as these had originally been planned by Jiménez to only be built in chiluca stone.
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Wikipedia