¡Por la Patria, Viva México Fuerte! A Mexican TL Mk. II

El Gran Diluvio: 1815-1817
El Gran Diluvio
1815-1817


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Father José Matías Delgado (depicted with his arm extended) and the Grito of San Salvador, November 5th, 1811

As the Great French War finally began to wane in Europe, the Coalition forces began the gargantuan task of returning the continent to its pre-revolutionary balance of power. Emperor Napoleon, aware that any further attempts to hold onto the Iberian Peninsula would only be futile, signed a formal peace treaty with the imprisoned Spanish monarch at the Château de Valençay in central France, which allowed for the evacuation of French troops north of the Pyrenees in exchange for King Fernando's guaranteed safe passage back to Spain. The Cortes of Cádiz also attempted to extract their own guarantee from Fernando that he be allowed re-entry into Spain only on the condition that he respect the liberal Constitution of Cádiz and rule as a constitutional monarch, but for all their efforts Fernando stopped short of issuing a definitive affirmation in that regard. Nevertheless, Fernando was permitted to return and in early 1814 he was formally transferred from French to Spanish custody in Catalonia and thus began the royal procession back to Madrid. Almost immediately, Fernando was inundated by a multitude of conservative courtiers and sycophant's who eagerly advised him to revoke the Constitution and rule as an absolute monarch, as all Bourbons had before him, as well as an opinion he deeply regarded as well. That spring Fernando followed through and nullified both the Constitution and the Cortes, initially promising to convene a "legitimate" cortes in the near future, though he quickly reneged on that promise as well.[1] It was at this point that any pretense of royal support for any semblance of a liberal cause, let alone support for American autonomy, all but evaporated. In the final months of 1814 Fernando began to plan for a substantial troop deployment of Spanish forces from Europe to the American colonies in order to return all renegade actors back into the Spanish fold, by any means necessary. By the spring of 1815 Spain had organized over 13,900 troops and 76 warships into a formal expeditionary force, which then embarked from Cádiz in April.[2] Chosen to head the American expedition was General Pablo Morillo, a battle hardened veteran of the French Wars, who was appointed by Fernando as Captain-General of Venezuela and led the bulk of the Spanish reinforcements in subduing the nascent United Provinces of Nueva Grenada, while smaller detachments were sent to support Royalist forces in Rio de la Plata, Chile and México.

With the threat of Spanish reinforcements looming over the eastern horizon, the Northern Insurgents under General Allende endeavored to consolidate Insurgent control over the northern territories, with a renewed push into Nuevo México in the early spring of 1815 after reports surfaced of the Royalist governor's struggle to contain rebellion that was brewing amongst the province's disaffected criollos. Royalist resistance to the Insurgent advance soon gave way to the latter's superior numbers and in early May Allende managed to overtake most of the Mesilla Valley, followed soon after by his capture of both Alburquerque and Santa Fé several weeks later. Save for the Californias and portions of Arizpe, Allende's northern flank was by and large secure, which allowed him to focus all his effort into retaking Nueva Galicia and the Bajío that summer. The region was already embroiled in an increasing state of guerrilla warfare, as Viceroy Calleja's reign of terror coupled with King Fernando's formal admonition all but assured further radicalization amongst the population at large and a further swelling of the Insurgent ranks as a result. In early August, as the first Spanish reinforcements began to disembark from Veracruz, Allende made his move and broke out of Nueva Vizcaya, and with the aid of local Insurgent cells much of Zacatecas and the Guadalajaran highlands were retaken within a matter of weeks. General Iturbide hastily marched his Royalist army out from Valladolid, where he forced the Insurgent advance to a halt southeast of Celaya in early October, but instead of forcing a head on battle Allende had a significant portion of his army scatter out into the Sierra Madre Oriental, where he organized a lethal guerrilla campaign which he managed to sustain for nearly seven months. During this time the Insurgents conducted a series of coordinated raids into once safe Royalist territories such as San Luis Potosí and Veracruz, not only to cripple Royalist supply lines but also to spread the Spanish forces as thin as possible. His inability to defeat the Insurgents out in the open field led Iturbide to become more vindictive and arbitrary with regard to captured Insurgents, including a particularly macabre episode where the Royalist general celebrated Good Friday by having nearly 500 prisoners of war publicly executed.

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Allende's conquest of Nuevo México

In an ironic twist the extremity of Iturbide's punitive actions was too severe for even his own Royalist superiors to stomach, and in late August 1815 he was summoned to the capital for a formal disciplinary hearing. After a litany of charges were levied against him, ranging from running various embezzlement schemes throughout Guanajuato to his various abuses of power and authority directed toward non-combatants, Viceroy Calleja determined to relieve Iturbide of his command for his numerous excesses in acts of corruption and overall cruelty, and stripped him of his rank. While many of the charges against Iturbide are verifiably based in fact, there is substantial evidence which suggests there was a more politically vindictive motive to his dismissal by Calleja. With the aid of a royal war auditor, Iturbide appealed the case against him and in early 1816 he was formally absolved of most of his charges and was invited on the authority of King Fernando VII to return to his former command in a blatant override of Calleja's authority, though he ultimately rebuffed the offer. Iturbide felt his honor was deeply wounded by his ordeal and in a final snub at the Viceroy, the former general made the decision to retire to his family estate in Valladolid, content to wait out the war as nothing more than a spectator.[3] Calleja for his part became increasingly more overwhelmed by the criticism mounted upon him over the loss of most of the territorial gains he had made the year before. As far as the royal court in Madrid was concerned, Calleja was to blame for Spain's "repeated military failures" in México, and in the spring of 1816 Fernando VII formally removed Calleja from his role as Viceroy. Calleja's designated successor was to be the now former Captain-General of Cuba Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, who's reputation as a fair and moderate adjudicator convinced the court in Madrid that he was the ideal candidate to help Spain reestablish its hegemony in North America. Calleja for his part did not take the news of his dismissal well, and in a fit of blind rage barricaded himself within the walls of the Viceroy's Palace, which initiated a brief but violent power struggle between Calleja's loyalists and other Royalists allied to the Audiencia. In the end Calleja was permitted to rule as de-facto Viceroy until September, at which point he would be transported back to Spain. Ruiz de Apodaca's delay was also caused in part by volatile clashes in the Sierra Madre Oriental which forced the new Viceroy and his procession to shelter, first at Veracruz and then at Xalapa until the road to México City was safe enough to traverse.

Ruiz de Apodaca began his term by issuing a general amnesty to all Insurgents who lay down their arms and submit to royal authority, in the hope that peaceful reconciliation would take the wind out of the Insurgency's sails. The amnesty initially did have a noticeable impact on Insurgent recruitment and morale within the first six months of its promulgation, but it ultimately did nothing to deter the prevailing spirit of independence simmering amongst the masses. Over the course of Allende's consolidation of the north, General Morelos had managed to accomplish a similar feat to the south in the Central American intendancies. Beginning in early 1815, Morelos marched his army across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and crossed into the Kingdom of Guatemala where the Captain-General in power, José de Bustamante y Guerra, had ruled with an iron fist as he struggled to quell a festering rebellion in San Salvador. In anticipation of Morelos' advance Bustamante heavily fortified the passes leading into the central highlands. however Morelos avoided direct confrontation with the Royalists strongholds of Ciudad Real and Tuxtla and instead overtook the Pacific lowlands with relative ease, entering Tonalá on the Chiapas coast with no resistance whatsoever on January 25. Further along the coast in Soconusco, the Spanish were overthrown by the citizenry of Escuintla and Tapachula as years-worth of discontent had boiled over into public revulsion, and within a matter of weeks Morelos was poised to strike at Quetzaltenango in Guatemala proper.

Bustamante had been consumed with paranoia for much of the previous year, after an attempted coup d'état in December 1813 nearly brought down his government. With an extensive spy network at his disposal he had come to learn of a budding insurgent conspiracy headquartered at the convent of Belén in the Guatemalan capital, which intended to overthrow him on the evening of the nochebuena and proclaim Guatemala's allegiance to the Insurgent General Morelos.[4] Several days before the start of the rebellion, on the night of the winter solstice, one of the leading conspirators, second lieutenant José Francisco Barrundia, was alerted to the conspiracy's discovery by Bustamante's network of spies and informants. With precious time at an absolute premium he ordered the plan be set in motion immediately. Aided by various members of Nueva Guatemala's ayuntamiento, as well as several sympathetic dragoon regiments loyal to Barrundia and his cohorts, the Guatemalan insurgents took control of the city and placed Bustamante under house arrest after a brief but violent struggle. Despite their initial success, control of the city by the Guatemalan Insurgents was always tenuous at best, and Royalist reinforcements from Chiapas and Yucatán eventually retook the city several weeks later, but not before the Guatemalan Insurgents managed to empty the city's prisons and evacuated to the southeast into the intendancy of San Salvador. The events in Guatemala sent ripple effects across the rest of the Captaincy General, first as San Salvador became firmly entrenched in the insurgent camp, then followed by new rebellions that erupted in Tegucigalpa, León, Grenada and Rivas over the course of 1814.[5]

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José de Bustamante y Guerra, 41st Captain-General of Guatemala

After several weeks spent consolidating his territorial gains along the Chiapas coast, Morelos marched into Guatemala proper in late February and took many of the towns lining the road to Quetzaltenango, including San Pablo, San Marcos and San Pedro Sacatepéquez before his army encountered stiff resistance in the mountain passes leading into the Quetzaltenango valley. The Royalists charged with holding back the insurgent advance were known as the Guatemalan Volunteer Corp, an elite royalist force created by Bustamante as a deterrent to any Insurgent activity, and indeed the Volunteer Corp had proven itself multiple times in the wake of repeated attempts at rebellion on the isthmus over the previous few years. While Morelos' army held the advantages of being fully mobilized and in far larger numbers, the Guatemalan Royalists were fighting on familiar terrain which gave them a significant advantage. Nevertheless, Morelos entrenched himself firmly to the west of Quetzaltenango near Concepción Chiquirichapa and over the course of nearly two months his army took control of the towns and villages lining the northern rim of the valley, including Olintepeque, San Andrés Xecul and Salcajá. The Mexican Insurgents were aided in large part by a concurrent uprising comprised of K'iche, Mam and Kaqchikel Maya who constituted a majority of the region's population. The culmination of Morelos' spring campaign came with the capture of Totonicapán in May, which effectively severed Quetzaltenengo's only connection to Nueva Guatemala and allowed Morelos to place the former under siege for several weeks before the few remaining Volunteer Corp members that remained escaped to the south, which allowed the Insurgents to enter the city unopposed in early June.

The Mexican occupation of a significant portion of southern Guatemala sent earth-shattering shockwaves throughout the entire isthmus, as Morelos' intervention sent new life into the rebellions in San Salvador, Comayagua and Nicaragua. Over the course of the summer the Central American Insurgents managed to coalesce around formerly imprisoned leaders such as José Matías Delgado (a Salvadorian criollo who lead the first Central American uprising in December 1811) and Gabriel O'Horan, an Insurgent leader from Masaya (an indian settlement located outside Granada along the northern end of Lake Nicaragua) who had managed to rally much of Nicaragua's Pacific Coast as well as significant portions of the interior as far north as Jinotega and Matagalpa in opposition to Spanish authority. Meanwhile Delgado and Barrundia united the disparate Insurgent fanctions in San Salvador (principally in the north and east of the intendancy such as those at Metapán, Santa Ana and San Miguel) and after subduing a Royalist counter-force from Zacatecoluca, marched nearly unopposed into San Salvador on July 21. The Royalist establishment in Nueva Guatemala grew more fearful by the day, as Morelos and the Central American Insurgents closed in from the east and west respectively. Over the course of August and September, Morelos' army took control of the north shore of Lake Atitlán as well as the towns of Chimaltenango and Antigua Guatemala, which left the Guatemalan capital vulnerable to a siege. These Royalist fears were amplified by Barrundia and Delgado's capture of Sonsonate and Esquintla to the south, and with it much of Guatemala's Pacific Coast. Bustamante's fears of encirclement by the Insurgents were only superseded by his fear over a repeat of the previous winter's attempted coup d'état, and as criollo agitation reached a fever pitch the Royalist captain-general made the decision to abandon the capital and in late October the royalists fled north, with some traveling west toward Huehuetenango and from there to Ciudad Real in Chiapas, while other groups continued their trek north past Cobán and into the Petén Basin.

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José Matías Delgado signing the Central American Declaration of Independence, November 7th, 1815

Amid a celebratory roar were Morelos and the coalition of Mexican and Central American rebels welcomed into Nueva Guatemala, as the city's ayuntamiento (which now endeavored to fill the void left by Bustamante's flight) enthusiastically threw its lot with the Insurgent commander and with him their firm support for the cause of independence. The indigenous Maya leadership, comprised by Manuel Tot, Anastasio Tzul and Narciso Mallol, were initially reserved and anxious over the question of independence, though they also were keenly aware of the evolving social and political landscape and they understood that allying with the Mexicans provided them the chance to renegotiate their relationship with the social contract. On November 7 Morelos issued a formal declaration of independence in Nueva Guatemala's Plaza de Armas, echoing the proclamation issued by Allende the year before in Chihuahua, and flanked by representative from all the Central American provinces who proceeded to swear oaths of fealty to the Mexican republic. The final seven weeks of 1815 saw Morelos, his lieutenants and his new Central American allies make short work of what remained of Spanish resistance on the isthmus, with Comayagua's capture in early December followed by León's capitulation several weeks later in January 1816. With Spanish power in Central America essentially broken , Morelos resolved to race north back into México as soon as he possibly could, which proved easier said than done due to a succession of torrential rains and snowstorms which hammered Guatemala and Chiapas that winter. Although Morelos did spend some time recruiting and reorganizing his army (which was now 7,800 strong) the winter storms seemed to only intensify with the passage of time, and in early March the Insurgents began their trek up the Pacific Coast. Unfortunately for Morelos the extreme weather took its toll on his army and approximately 270 of his soldiers perished while crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec alone, though it also proved deadly for the Royalists whom had evacuated to Chiapas after Guatemala's fall to the Insurgents. An attempt by former captain-general Bustamante to attack Morelos on his march north ended in disaster when fierce winter snow forced Bustamante to march back toward Ciudad Real, where he subsequently contracted a severe case of pneumonia and died that April.[6]

Acting-Viceroy Calleja feared the likelihood of being enveloped by a united Insurgent army, and as Morelos's forces approached Oaxaca he moved to prepare for the worst. In late 1815 an exasperated Calleja had appealed to Madrid yet again for more Spanish troops, evidently dissatisfied with the "paltry" reinforcements that had arrived at the beginning of the year. Evidently there were in fact plans being drawn up to raise second massive armada, this time one which would be sent to fight specifically in México, but in the meantime Fernando VII ordered several thousand troops from the Tierra Firme Expedition be transferred from Nueva Granada to aid the Mexican Royalists, a decision which did not sit at all well with General Morillo, who was barely on the heels of capturing Cartagena de Indias that previous December.[7] In late January one of Morillo's lieutenants, General Pascual Enrile y Acedo was chosen to lead approximately 2,700 troops from Nueva Granada to México, with orders to seek out and destroy the Southern Insurgents lead by Morelos. General Enrile's expeditionary force arrived at the ports of Alvarado and Veracruz on March 13 where he subsumed control of the Division of Veracruz, the largest Royalist army on the Gulf Coast, and with a total of 8,500 men under his command he marched south into the Papaloapan Basin. Much of the Gulf coastal plain had become a major Insurgent haven, and echoing the counterinsurgency measures used by Calleja and Bustamante, Enrile sought to eliminate any and all resistance by whatever means he deemed necessary.

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General Pascual Enrile y Acedo, Commander of the Ejercito del Oriente

On March 20 the newly minted Ejercito del Oriente marched west toward Córdoba in order to strengthen the supply route between Veracruz and the Capital, before turning south toward the Sierra Mazateca, which was the site of massive indigenous resistance.[8] After a month long siege Enrile put the village of Soyaltepec to the torch before continuing toward Tuxtepec, with the goal of luring Morelos into a fight out in the open. Enrile had reason to feel optimistic, as he received reports of Morelos' movements through the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca in late April, and more specifically news that the unusually inclement weather was taking its toll on the Insurgent's numbers and morale, so much so that the Insurgents failed to dislodge Enrile out from Tuxtepec.[9] Ultimately the Insurgents were forced to retreat east where they managed to check Enrile's advance at the Battle of Tesechoacán, before Morelos dispersed his forces into the Sierra Madre del Sur, where guerrilla warfare made the prospect of pursuit too costly on the Royalist's part. The two armies were nearly evenly matched, but it was the Insurgent's mastery of both irregular warfare as much as the terrain that proved to tip the balance in their favor. Undeterred and aware that the Insurgents were retreating towards the coast, Enrile attempted to bypass Morelos by marching through the Tehuantepec lowlands in order to capture Salina Cruz and deprive the Insurgents the chance to rally, but to his profound misfortune he came to deeply regret that decision.
The tropical lowlands of southern México receive copious amounts of rainfall year round, a fact which frustrated Enrile but it was something he had prepared for as best as he could. The spring of 1816 proved to be equally historic and unusual for much of the northern hemisphere as erratic climate events wreaked havoc across North America, Europe and Asia, in a period of time that would come to be referred to by posterity as the "year without a summer." Freezing rain and snow wrought devastation on the Royalists who were vastly unprepared to deal with near-polar conditions in the swamps of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as hundreds succumbed to starvation and the extreme cold. To make matters worse for the Royalists, Morelos had managed to reach Salina Cruz first, which meant Enrile's disastrous and costly detour proved to be an exercise of futility. In early June the Royalists attempted to cross the Chivela Pass but Morelos beat them back at the Battle of Iztepeque, dealing Enrile's Army of the East a crippling blow and effectively trapping Enrile and his men in the windswept mountain passes of the isthmus. The Royalist loss at Iztepeque was immediately overshadowed by the arrival of hurricane-force Tehuano winds to the region immediately after the battle, which battered the beleaguered Royalists forces as they attempted a northerly retreat back toward the Gulf Coast.[10] The extreme weather did force the Insurgents to delay their chase by a couple of days, however the battered remains of Enrile's expeditionary force (which now numbered under 5,000) still barely managed to maintain its lead over Morelos as it attempted to make its way back to Alvarado. Despite his own losses Morelos had two of his lieutenants (Guerrero and Montes de Oca) outflank Enrile and in a pincer formation the Insurgents issued another crippling blow to the Army of the East at the Battle of Tlacotalpan, where royalist losses numbered nearly 2,000. On July 12 an exhausted General Enrile reentered Veracruz at the head of an army that was only one-third its original size.

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Seven long years of warfare had left New Spain bloody and broken

Several weeks later in early August, the Insurgents captured Alvarado as well as Espíritu Santo to the southeast, which gave them control of a large swath of the Gulf Coast from Veracruz to the Province of Yucatán.[11] Within the fortnight Ruiz de Apodaca and Calleja briefly crossed paths as the former crossed the mountains into the Valley of México while the latter approached Veracruz, where he was to immediately embark for Spain. The general amnesty which was promulgated by the Viceroy several weeks later was impactful enough that the conflict seemed to freeze over the course of the autumn and early winter. However the lull in hostilities can also be attributed to the dilapidated state of the colony as it entered its sixth year of war, as the extreme weather forced repeated crop yields to suffer catastrophic losses, which in turn led to famine which engulfed nearly all of New Spain by the winter of 1816. Tens of thousands of people would ultimately succumb to the famine by the onset of spring in early 1817, with Insurgents and Royalists alike suffering significant losses, and as war fatigue had begun to set within all the various warring factions the prospect of a "perpetual war" began to haunt the leadership of both sides, to the consternation of all. The Royalists were hell-bent on holding what little territory they still controlled (which by 1817 had been reduced to portions of Nuevo Santander, San Luis Potosí, Nueva Galicia, Valladolid, México, Puebla and Veracruz) with the hope that reinforcements from Spain would arrive in time to turn the tide of the war in their favor. The Insurgents for their part were desperate enough to send Miguel Hidalgo to treat with Agustín de Iturbide in an attempt to persuade the former Royalist commander to join the Insurgents, though in the end he would maintain his neutrality and rebuffed Hidalgo's offers. Then in early April, rumors of a small rebel flotilla in the Gulf of México were confirmed to be fact with known sightings at New Orleans and Galveston indicating a southerly route down the Gulf Coast. The flotilla's rebel inclinations were made all the more clear upon making landings north of Tampico on May 30, where the commanding officer Francisco Javier Mina issued a formal declaration admonishing the tyranny of King Fernando VII and his desire to aid the Mexican Insurgents in their struggle for independence.[12]

[1] Much like OTL, Fernando doesn't count promises made to Liberals.
[2] The army sent to reconquer the Americas in TTL is slightly larger than its OTL counterpart.
[3] This also runs a very similar course to what happened in OTL, especially with regard to the court martial and Iturbide's subsequent appeal.
[4] Here we got another divergence point. In OTL the Conspiracy of Belén never amounted to much and was easily subverted by Bustamante, but TTL's conspiracy has a much larger pool of support to draw upon (a ripple effect from TTL's much more successful Mexican Insurgent movement) which managed to even the field between the Royalists and the Guatemalan Insurgents. The nochebuena is December 24th, essentially Christmas Eve.
[5] Very much like the previous post, the Central American Insurgents of TTL are much more numerous and active, and presumably after many of the region's rebel elite (after languishing in Guatemalan prisons for months or years on end) were suddenly freed, it's possible they'd return to their home bases and rally. With Morelos coming in from the west, the Royalists are not having a good time.
[6] I took some slight artistic license with the effects from the year without a summer, in part because I could not find any information is it pertained to Mexico...other than a sentence on the Spanish wikipedia which mentions that it snowed in southern Mexico and Guatemala. I read somewhere else that New Spain probably experienced dry arid conditions brought on by a stationary high, though when I read about the Yw/oas it sounds like a global event that affected most of the northern hemisphere. Much like the torrential rains of the previous years, I figure New Spain wasn't immune to the sudden bouts of cold and the extreme temperature fluctuations that hit other parts of North America, Europe and Asia.
[7] This probably will not bode well for Morillo's mission in Nueva Granada. Fly butterfly fly :biggrin:
[8] The Mazatecans were a notable indigenous group which put up fierce resistance.
[9] The Sierra Norte of Oaxaca would eventually be renamed the Sierra Juarez in OTL.
[10] Tehuano winds are hurricane force winds which blow down the Isthmus of Tehuantepec when certain climactic conditions are met. Classic case of mother nature beating the enemy while they're down.
[11] Espíritu Santo is the original name for Coatzacoalcos.
[12] Francisco Javier Mina arrives about a month later than OTL, but this time around he has an army roughly 5X larger than OTL. Needless to say the butterflies have been at work.
 
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Alusion to the polish one?
Kinda yeah. The climatic elements (such as the snow and the rain) also allude to a sort of deluge as well, but it's indeed an allusion to the Insurgents pressing the Royalists from multiple fronts, much like the Russians and Swedes did with the PLC.
 
Iturbide stays neutral! Very interesting.
Great update as always Arkhangelsk!
Thanks so much jycee!! :) I feel Iturbide would totally be one to remain neutral until nearly the end to wait and see which side will prevail to throw their lot with them. Regardless of how many Insurgents feel about the dude (no love lost I'm sure), securing someone like Iturbide would be a game changer.

The next update should finally see independence finally wrapped up, at least in New Spain.
 
I hope Mexico will counters what would become America's Monroe Doctrine, only because I don't want Latin America to be under their boots with pro-American dictators and what may/may not become 'The Banana Republic' years later. Besides incompetent and corrupt leaders in South America, the U.S also cause South America be unstable...
 
I hope Mexico will counters what would become America's Monroe Doctrine, only because I don't want Latin America to be under their boots with pro-American dictators and what may/may not become 'The Banana Republic' years later. Besides incompetent and corrupt leaders in South America, the U.S also cause South America be unstable...
Assuming they don't become imperialist douchebags themselves later on, like most, if not all, great powers.
 
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The Monroe Doctrine will be a major contention point between Mexico and the United States, and with the former potting the latter in it's place it will undoubtedly become a darling amongst the other independent Latin American nations. The threat of Mexico becoming an imperialist bully are there though (probably not helped with all those irredentist claims left over from the colonial period) so that will be something to watch out for.
 
The Monroe Doctrine will be a major contention point between Mexico and the United States, and with the former potting the latter in it's place it will undoubtedly become a darling amongst the other independent Latin American nations. The threat of Mexico becoming an imperialist bully are there though (probably not helped with all those irredentist claims left over from the colonial period) so that will be something to watch out for.
Yeah, that's true but I can also see Mexico and the U.S being competitive with each other in Latin America and the Caribbean later down the line.
 
It would actually be pretty interesting seeing if Mexico would like to contest some of the Louisiana claims it had as New Spain. But I'm fairly sure it's going to let Oregon go to Britain like in mkI purely for alliance reasons.
 
I think that Mexico might not have anything against ORIGINAL meaning of Monroe doctrine.
Just the opposite, they might found that doctrine.
In a way, depending on what they did to enforce it, it could be better since a very large chunk of the continent is Spanish speaking and thus has more culturally relevant ties than a democracy where the primary class was made up of WASPs. Who knows, maybe the idea of a Latinamerican Monroe Doctrine could be good.
 
It would actually be pretty interesting seeing if Mexico would like to contest some of the Louisiana claims it had as New Spain. But I'm fairly sure it's going to let Oregon go to Britain like in mkI purely for alliance reasons.
Yeah as much fun as it would be to explore the idea of a Mexican Oregon, by the point of the POD it's too late I feel for Mexico to pursue Spain's territorial claims in the far north of the continent. So you're right Oregon's pretty much firmly in the Anglo-American sphere of influence. Florida and Texas are probably the only major contention points that will arise between the United States and an independent Mexico in the short term, but New Spain's other territorial limits aren't off the table. Morelos has by and large brought Central America into the Mexican camp already, and once independence is consummated all eyes will be on Cuba. I can assure you Mexico will try it's hardest to ensure it neither remains with Spain or get's sold to/invaded by the United States.

This talk of a Latino Monroe Doctrine actually reminds me of where I was heading with mk. I of the timeline. Basically Mexico, Gran Colombia and Chile unite to beat Spain in TTL's souped-up version of the War of the Pacific, essentially laying the ground work for a legit alliance...though that was all happening in the 1880's. I agree with you though, a Pan-American alliance might be more palatable to the rest of Latin America if they just exclude the United States.
 
Hmmmm, the idea of a Mexican Cuba would be interesting, but I think it's more likely an effort is made for its independence. Or who knows, the allure of more land is always tempting~
Who's to say Cuba won't eventually gain it's place among all the other independence nations of the world? ;) In the short term I feel the Cuban rebels might acquiesce to Mexican control as the lesser of three evils, but realistically I don't think it matters if it's Spain, Mexico or the United States who controls the island, to the locals they're probably all imperialists.
 
I think it would be quiet easy for Spain to keep Cuba and Puerto Rico, should they be a bit more liberal. But hey I guess I have a soft spot for Spain XD
 
Regardless of what happens with the island of Cuba, the Gulf must become a Mexican lake! :evilsmile:

But in all seriousness, I think Mexico would benefit far more from a friendly, independent Cuba than a rebellious island state which saps manpower and attention from other places.

Also, Feliz Año Nuevo a todos! And I hope the next update comes as soon as you can, Arkhangelsk. Gracias por el año :)
 
I think it would be quiet easy for Spain to keep Cuba and Puerto Rico, should they be a bit more liberal. But hey I guess I have a soft spot for Spain XD
DEATH TO THE SPANISH EMPIRE!! (Modern Spain I don't mind, but past Spain... not so much, and I'm American-born Mexican so...)
 
DEATH TO THE SPANISH EMPIRE!! (Modern Spain I don't mind, but past Spain... not so much, and I'm American-born Mexican so...)
PLVS VLTRA

Lol I guess I just am biased because Spain gets so often ignored in alternate history. And a reformed Spanish Empire is a personal favorite ATL of mine, giving it the Britwank treatment. But I digress lol :p .
 
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