Monumento a los Niños Héroes

The Fuente de Petróleos (lit. transl. Fountain of Petroleum), officially the Monumento a la Industria Petrolera de México (lit. transl. Monument to the Petroleum Industry of Mexico), is a monument in Chapultepec, Mexico City. Created at the request of President Miguel Alemán Valdés, the artwork honors the Mexican oil expropriation, in which President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the oil industry on 18 March 1938, leading to the creation of the state-owned company Pemex. The monument was erected on a roundabout along Paseo de la Reforma and Anillo Periférico. It features a tall pillar of cantera stone, the tuff that is a traditional Mexican building material, surrounded by two groups of sculptures in the center of a fountain. The monument belongs to a period in the country when monumentalism was a prevailing trend. The sculptures depict a classicist scene influenced by academicism, representing primarily oil workers alongside a figure of Victoria, set among oil-related elements. The Fuente de Petróleos was designed by the architect Vicente Mendiola and the sculptor Juan Fernando Olaguíbel, who had previously collaborated on works that include the Diana the Huntress Fountain in the city and the Monumento a los Niños Héroes in Guadalajara. The model who posed for the Diana the Huntress Fountain also did so for the monument.