Added Illinois and Poutaxia:
Looks good, and I agree with the changes you made.
So about a thousand years ago,
@Venusian Si and I exchanged PMs about Mexico that have formed the basis of our thinking about it. I don't think anything was ever actually posted, so here I'm going to copy what we wrote in the PMs and try to sort of combine it all into something comprehensible.
El Imperio Mexicano
The Mexican Empire
View attachment 452893
Modern Mexico began with a nationalist revolution of the OTL sort - local elites who rose up against the monarchy. And like OTL, this also served to stir up resentment toward those same elites by the Indio majority. But this time, the new independent monarch managed to position himself as the ally and champion of the People, so that the order that emerged in the 1800s was one where the monarchy was supported by that indigenous/militarist/socialist/religious movement. This alliance encouraged Spanish/Nahuatl bilingualism. And "Free Land for the Peasants!" became the driving force behind the conquest of the northern frontier. This resulted in lots of homesteaders migrating from central Mexico to the prairies, bringing their cultures and languages with them.
The ASB served as a destination for Native people displaced by the homesteaders. The western states, especially Arques, Dakota, and Assiniboia, have populations of people originating out west who had to flee. The Indians already living there largely welcomed them as a counterbalance to English settlers moving in from the other direction, and Louisiana Creoles coming from the south.
As for a timeline:
1800-1810: With the Napoleonic Wars as a backdrop, Spain had a civil war of succession. Sibling B overthrew Sibling A in the Mainland, but elites of New Spain rejected the claims of the usurper. Sibling A fled to New Spain, successfully separating it from the rest of the Empire with the support of local elites.
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810-1840: Local White elites entrenched their power in the New Spanish state, dominating the government at the expense of the monarchy and further marginalizing the indigenous and Mestizo poor. Various reformist and revolutionary movements, many of them strongly religious, bubbled under the surface. Also during this time, the grandchild of the exiled Monarch was born. His Jesuit-influenced education and the injustices that he/she witnesses served to harden his/her views against the current regime; s/he would become the first of the "People's Emperors."
1840-1850s: Poor harvests and an economic downtown caused widespread social unrest. The young but charismatic "People's Emperor/Empress" championed him/herself as the ally of every New Spaniard - no - every Mexican of the Empire. Revolts in major cities led to a revolution, resulting in a new constitutional monarchy that was more broadly based. New Spain was renamed Mexico.
1850s-1900: Era of the First People's Emperor, and the Era of the Wild North.
Under the rule of a strong monarch, Mexico undertook a series of major social reforms. The ruling ideology combined a devout Catholicism, an emphasis on Mexico's indigenous heritage, and a hefty dose of militarism (to best protect the homeland, of course). Alongside this, economic reforms laid the foundations of the modern Mexican welfare state. Later on, the discovery of oil in *Tejas will push 20th Century Mexico more towards the path of State Capitalism and a very robust social safety net.
While the late 1850s saw the first steps toward colonizing the wild North, a much bigger government-fueled effort began after the discovery of gold in Alta California in the early 1860s. A policy of "Land for Peasants" began, and many of the poor of central and southern Mexico headed north. Clashes with Northern Indigenous and (to a lesser extent) settlers from the ASB resulted in the creation of this Mexico's "Wild West Myth." The exile of various tribes and some ASB Europeans from the Mexican North led to tension between the ASB and Mexico, including at least one war near the end of the century.
This period also saw immigration from both China and mainland Europe, due to promises of gold, silver, and farmland.
1898-1901: The death of the First People's Emperor/Empress and the discovery of Oil in *Tejas; beginning of the Age of Oil.
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So obviously names and details need to be filled in, but this is the general background for the country.