Challenge: Mexico becomes a great power
- Thread starter Bopater
- Start date
In all fairness Mexico WAS seen as a great power-to-be when it initially got independence, what with it holding the modern southwest USA and Central America.
Have those areas not be cleved off, maybe keep Santa Anna out of things, and things can't be too much worse than they already are.
Have those areas not be cleved off, maybe keep Santa Anna out of things, and things can't be too much worse than they already are.
You'll have to stop the US from slicing off the Northern half in 1848. Perhaps the US never broke away from British Empire? Mexico could have it's independence delayed to, say, the 1840s, then take off and use the resources they've hung onto to build up to 2nd tier status.
You will also have to solve Mexico's political instabilities, some how.
You will also have to solve Mexico's political instabilities, some how.
Start with Texas. Make the immigration standards much more stringent (all Mexico required OTL was a lipservice conversion to Catholicism). Insist upon knowledge of Spanish as an immigration requirement, and enforce immigration quotas. I'm not sure how this could be done given how overextended Mexico was in Texas, but that would be a start.
The challenge Mexico faces is not unlike that of the old Confederacy: lots of large landowners who regarded themselves as the ultimate power to be reckoned with on their own land, and no real loyalty to anyone other than their own families. Somehow the ranchero system has to be broken down or modified to allow the central government to retain more power.
maverick
Banned
We should start by preventing Santa-Ana's rise and by providing a more stable leadership at the beginning...
I always liked the idea of a Spanish prince or Agustin de Iturbide doing it...
What is needed is a government strong enough to keep the country together but federalized so as to prevent autonomic issues in the northern provinces...not to mention the need to prevent power struggles and civil wars...
Killing Santa Ana would be good...keeping Iturbide's First Empire for a few decades or some strong central government for enough time to be stable would also be desirable...
I always liked the idea of a Spanish prince or Agustin de Iturbide doing it...
What is needed is a government strong enough to keep the country together but federalized so as to prevent autonomic issues in the northern provinces...not to mention the need to prevent power struggles and civil wars...
Killing Santa Ana would be good...keeping Iturbide's First Empire for a few decades or some strong central government for enough time to be stable would also be desirable...
Why not an earlier Hapsburg regime? Perhaps one a little more competently run than Maximillian's was?
Bingo! IMO the whole basic problem most of Latin America faces is the who peon and patron thing they inherited from the Spanish. I mean other than Chile and Costa Rica what other former Spanish Colony in the Americas is not a basket case
Okay, a lot of misconceptions here. Mexico winning the Mexican-American war won't change things too much, because by that time, they were already declining under Santa Anna.
Umbric and Maverick are right, get rid of Santa Anna, and keep Iturbide on the throne and you already have a stable Mexico that reaches from Costa Rica to California.
A Hapsburg regime wouldn't work because it would have to have been run by a foreign power (see France IOTL), something the Mexicans won't and didn't tolerate.
To Yourworstnightmare:
Not so ASB. As I said before, it would actually be quite easy if you kept Iturbide on the throne for longer, and get rid of Santa Anna entirely.
To Kevin Renner:
Read up on Latin American history. There's so much wrong with what you just posted.
Umbric and Maverick are right, get rid of Santa Anna, and keep Iturbide on the throne and you already have a stable Mexico that reaches from Costa Rica to California.
A Hapsburg regime wouldn't work because it would have to have been run by a foreign power (see France IOTL), something the Mexicans won't and didn't tolerate.
To Yourworstnightmare:
Not so ASB. As I said before, it would actually be quite easy if you kept Iturbide on the throne for longer, and get rid of Santa Anna entirely.
To Kevin Renner:
Read up on Latin American history. There's so much wrong with what you just posted.
According to the UN's Human Development Index Mexico is actually at the tail end of High Human Development and ahead of countries like Russia and China. Mexico's not far from what we want. Keep the PRI out of power for another few decades and it just might make it, too. Mexico will likely never be a major military power. Culturally it's just not in the cards; with the US as an ally and no major foreign threats they really don't need to be anyway. At most, Mexico might participate in a few UN peacekeeping missions and make Guatemala think twice about its opinion of the border between the two. But as an economic power Mexico is already fairly formidable. Reducing corruption and infrastructure development are the order of the day today, as they were back in the days we're talking about. Mexico didn't even have a highway system until the 20th century.
Keeping Iturbide on the throne would work, but he really needs a strong and respected personality to fill a prime minister role to keep him from going too overboard against dissenters. His overly harsh responses to people who disagreed with him is what got him run out of the country (and shot when he tried to return) in OTL. Make your POD a little earlier and have Father Hidalgo survive; he'd be a good choice for Iturbide's PM (and would keep the Church on the side of Mexico). Being very popular with the Indian and mestizo populations, Hidalgo's participation in the government would allow the Iturbide dynasty to become a popular institution with the lower classes. Hidalgo was also a social reformer, which might help mitigate the near-caste system set up under Spanish rule. Mexico had already abolished slavery as of 1821 so that's a good start. From there, they just need to make the peon/patron system less like serfdom and Hidalgo's just the man for that.
A Hapsburg regime wouldn't be out of the question, actually: after independence the Mexicans petitioned every Catholic royal family in Europe to take the throne, but none would accept (which is why Iturbide ended up on the throne in the first place). The Hapsburgs are Catholic and were at one point the ruling dynasty in Spain. A restless Spanish Hapsburg collateral who needs to be put far, far away would be an ideal fit for the Mexican throne. It wouldn't be the first time that the Spanish Hapsburgs dumped a troublesome nobleman on Mexico, after all.
As for Latin American countries being well-off: Venezuela isn't all that bad off, their present leadership notwithstanding. And Argentina has been close to major power, if not Great Power status as recently as the early 20th century (the Peronistas didn't exactly do them any favors after Eva died). With civilian rule restored and a couple more decades to get their economy in order Argentina could be a strong nation again.
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I don't think Iturbide is really an option here. His so many mistakes during his short reign probably set the path to the decline of OTL. In fact, he never was an enthusiast of his coronation and recognized that he wasn't suited for any rule but the military. To me, he just looks like a good-hearted Santa Anna.
So make Iturbide a figurehead monarch--someone to serve as a beloved unifying symbol, wear fancy uniforms in parades, etc.--and give him a good PM or Parliament to actually run the country. The haciendados might serve as a basis for such a parliament; they do have some mutual interests (such as keeping out foreign interference and combatting American expansionism) and improving Mexico's internal infrastructure would only make everyone richer.
PRI is the reason that Mexico ranks high in development. They provided stable government for the greater part of the 20th century, allowing Mexico to modernize and grow economically and then gave up power in the 90's relatively peaceably.
In order for Mexico to succeed I think that you need the social order to be basically unchallenged. Attempts at social reform lead to social disorder and the destructive civil wars that kept Mexico from developing in the 19th century. So how about Iturbide stays on the loyalist side and sometimes in the 30's or 40's you have a Bourbon cadet dynasty take over (Carlists?). They maintain the social order and keep a nice stable investment environment for the Brits.
Unfortunately that growth and development came at the cost of institutionalized corruption and continued concentration of wealth into the hands of the elites. Neither of which are conducive to any country becoming a great power. Mexico was effectively a single-party state for over 70 years and a few more election cycles are going to be necessary before true democracy gains traction.
Social reform will come, one way or the other. How that social reform will come makes a big difference in how stable any country remains in the long-term. Otherwise a significant percentage of Mexico's population remains a permanent underclass and that's not conducive to the stated goal.
Being a great power and being a liberal democracy in the Western model are not the same thing. A country can be authoritarian and have a terribly wide wealth gap and yet still somehow manage to be a Great Power. From 18th and 19th century Europe the Russians immediately come to mind. Louis XIV's France. The PRC.
Social reform sounds good, but it ends up being used to justify monsterous crimes. The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, the Cultural Revolution in China, Lenin's and then Stalin's murder of millions dubbed enemies of the people, the Khymer Rouge's reign of terror in Cambodia, all of these things done in the name of social reform.
That being said, social reform has also been carried out in other ways that end up far less destructive. You could argue the military regimes that ruled South Korea for most of its post-WWII history were committed to a program of social reform, building up the middle class and the country's commercial might to a point where the military was no longer necessary to control the country. China's decision to re-engage with the world and commit itself to massive economic reform was (is) a huge social reform. Even the British maintained pretty tight elite control over the government until the economy had grown enough to allow fuller popular participation.
Faeelin
Banned
Err. Russia, which collapsed in revolution and fell behind? And was clearly not the greatest power on the continent?
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
It would be hard, but it could happen. If Mexico can hold it together until Southern European immigration starts to happen, Spanish and Italian immigrants can probably be pretty easily absorbed pretty easily. Railroads will be necessary to hold onto distant California, but Mexico at it's greatest extent has a whole lot of resources and excellent land.
I kind of agree that delayed independence might have worked better - maybe if you could get a legitimate monarchy in place that might have smoothed things a bit politically. Empire of Mexico and all that.
I kind of agree that delayed independence might have worked better - maybe if you could get a legitimate monarchy in place that might have smoothed things a bit politically. Empire of Mexico and all that.
Not necessarily Spanish and Italian immigrants, though - there could also be the possibility of major waves of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe, as with the rest of North America around that time.