Ok, so everyone is going to be able to get those opportunities and move out of Mexico? Nice.
If you can move to California, you can move from (within the 2014 borders of) Mexico, you can get those opportunities and move outside of New Spain.
We're not talking about an easy trip either way, after all.
The Boers don't have nearly the same amount of numbers, resources and aid that the Mexicans do. But going along with that analogy, is there no way to mitigate the damage?
The Boers also are actually having their government and military might concentrated in the same area as gold country, as opposed to far away.
I'm not sure what you can do about that when you're the weaker power (more than just USians are going to come here, so Mexico has to compare to them too).
"Wait, do we have the money to go anywhere else?"
I don't think your average peasant would have the money to move to another country by himself.
See my first comment here - if the average peasant can move to San Jose or San Diego, he can move to another country by himself. It doesn't become more expensive to cross hundreds (at least) miles NE as opposed to NW.
Now, as for an immigrant, it depends. An Englishmen with money would likely move to the US.
But, as I've said before, a 'better' ecological climate isn't everything. There's other matters like culture, language, contacts, religion and familiarity. One might see more protestants go to the US, but Catholics deciding to go to Mexico.
The problem is that for - say - an Irishman, a lot of those (culture, language, contacts, familiarity) - favor the US, or at least aren't any less favorable to the US than Mexico. Spain's colonial policies leave New Spain a lot more reflective of Spain and just Spain than what made up the US is reflective of England (not even Britain) and just England.
This isn't beyond fixing, but a POD so far back as to change that dramatically is going to mean that 1800 looks unrecognizable. If that's not a problem, that might make some pretty interesting timelines.
Define they? Immigrants? Mexican citizens? The Native Americans?
Also, just how much poorer was Northern Mexico to say, the Midwestern United States in the very early 1820s?
"They" as in the people you're claiming can't be choosers.
Northern Mexico vs. the Midwestern United States: How many Mexicans owned their own land? I can't read Spanish, so even if there's census data I'd have trouble citing it, but that provides an obvious way to check.
I didn't know you speak for the millions of humans that had a chance to settle.
I speak based on the millions of humans that had a chance to settle what is (OTL) the US chose mostly the area that (as of the early 1800s) is the US. I don't need to speak for them to speak OF them.
No, but that alone is enough to help kickstart development far earlier than OTL.
And government investment can't help to start a market? I mean, a market for trade and investment can develop if one major settlement is developed far north (possibly by a far earlier Gold Rush, say 1820s, for example).
Again, government investment with what money? You can't have the government invest money it doesn't have to produce industry and trade that will then provide further funds.
Ok, so what's needed to develop a market in your view? What do you need to kickstart the development of a frontier?
A lot of energetic entrepreneurs high on optimism and with enough resources to absorb the inevitable setbacks and difficulties of settling the frontier. It's going to be a hit and miss proposition for the individual anywhere, under any state, just by the nature of the business. So you need enough continued interest to get over that phase, and that means something attractive enough to be worth taking those risks. The fur trade is one nice thing - it provides a ready market (the trappers) actually on the frontier, a ready market back home to make real money, and has the area become familiar enough that when settlers come, there are people who can guide them through the bad parts.
That's a lot easier in the Louisiana Purchase area than say Arizona, however.
-Growth in population and especially that of cities.
-A more educated populace as compared to OTL
-A more developed state. A large reason why Latin America was still stuck with an agricultural base for as long as it did was lack of infrastructure to move goods around, and the lack of state control to improve the infrastructure, along with the potential for bandit raids, attacks by guerillas and other hostile groups, which made trading far more costly than in America.
Its far cheaper to do business and that will encourage more people to do business and to start earlier.
But the problem is, those cities won't grow on their own. People have to want to come there. And so on.
So let me phrase my question to you like this.
How do you sell this place as worth settling in? With "this place" being the part of Mexico you want to develop - the frontier, the area that as of 2014 is still Mexican, somewhere in the other Latin American countries - you can pick. What do you want to do to encourage development? What tools do you even have to encourage development? (as in, what powers do you have to work with - setting low tariffs requires control of that in federal hands)
At least you didn't say it could be justified because butterflies.
Embracing butterflies makes it hard to study cause and effect.
Because often times in Latin America the government was run by a certain group of Aristocrats that didn't like cities, by being puppets of a foreign country/business that didn't want the area to develop, often times the middle class would squabble amongst themselves (this also includes the 'lower' upper classes and the government bureaucracy) and didn't have enough of a presence to counterbalance the aristocracy by themselves. Usually they required the help of a powerful caudillo, which brings its own set of problems.
So that brings us to how, in your scenario, we remove that. Those are huge obstacles to even trying to encourage what you want to encourage, let alone having any successes.
The US lacked either such a dominant aristocratic element (overall - the Southern planters do not represent the norm of the US), did not suffer from being a puppet, and the middle class had a very healthy presence thanks to the better developed commercial/mercantile stuff TFSmith has gone into.
Since we presumably want a recognizable US for this to be meaningful - if "The US" is New England and the rest has splintered into petty states, its not very hard to make that a minor country - this is going to mean Mexico needs the changes.
I wish I knew enough about Spanish colonial polices (pre and post Bourbons) to suggest an area to tweak - it's not as if Spain set its colonies up to fail purposefully.
These different components can add up to a larger economy than than the US possibly. Having multiple developed sectors could make the economy more robust which allows it to withstand economic depressions better, allowing the state to bounce back faster during these critical periods. Might also help bridge the gap.
Its not the best thing yes, but nothing says we have to beat the US by say, 1860.
The US has multiple sectors too. And I'd say we should aim to at least be competing with the US by 1900 for this. Not as a hard and fast rule - just trying to find some way of seeing if a given thing is working out (if its still working by 1900, the US is unlikely to suddenly get a case of self-destruction)
Dat historical determinism. Never pegged you for the type, but that's for another discussion.
How was the difference in development in the US in 1810 than Mexico?
Dat historical observation that by 1810, the different effects of colonial rule in (what would be) Mexico vs. the US have already shaped the two, so it would be hard to use modifying that to make a difference. The US has already survived the chance of being broken asunder by the Articles of Confederation failing and the Constitution not being accepted, so that hurting the US isn't going anywhere.
The later your POD, the better established the US already is.
And what developments do you want to compare?
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/19thcentury1800.htm
And the sequel.
Mexican equivalent will take longer to find.