The copper-and-steel eagle was cast by French animalier Georges Gardet and the bronze high reliefs were created by Mexican sculptor Jesús Fructuoso Contreras.

The eagle was originally intended to be placed on top of the never-completed Federal Legislative Palace—later replaced with the Monumento a la Revolución in downtown Mexico City—, while the reliefs were based on those created for the Aztec Palace, presented in the Mexican pavilion of the 1889 Paris Exposition.

Even though the monument drew criticism from writers and historians for its choice of Porfirian components and caricaturizing Mesoamerican architecture, it contributed the area's to be known as "La Raza" and the naming of several nearby structures.

[1] The indigenous population was seen as a problem for the country's modernization and the government sought means to facilitate their integration into the Porfirian society.

[3] The conflict lasted until 1920 and the Europhile government was replaced with one that promoted the indigenismo ideology[4]—a political philosophy that exalts the Latin American indigenous population.

Faustino Rodríguez-San Pedro y Díaz-Argüelles, president of the Unión Ibero-Americana [es] promoted it and multiple Latin American countries adopted it.

[10][11] Borbolla intended to reflect the history of Mexico in the monument;[11] Augusto Petriccioli, a Mexican architect, gave advice to Lelo de Larrea.

[11] The monument is dedicated to and is named after La Raza,[7] a Spanish-language term referring to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and their descendants, used by Hispanophone Western populations that spread after the end of the Mexican Revolution and with the beginning of the Chicano Movement in the United States.

[17] It has four sides, each built with sloped smooth walls over the rafters, that are decorated as well with reliefs based on the Xochicalco's Feathered Serpent.

[21] Each side of the pyramid's apex features one high relief created with bronze castings by Jesús Fructuoso Contreras.

[22] The monument lies on the median strip of Avenida de los Insurgentes, near Circuito Interior and Calzada Vallejo,[23] in the colonia (neighborhood) of San Simón Tolnáhuac, in the Cuauhtémoc borough.

[32] According to historian Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, the monument is ironic, because it tries to depart "from the old regime's Francophilia", but it reuses many of the symbols and materials "created by the Porfirian years of experimenting in modernity and nationalism".