American Mexico (U.S. annexation of Mexico after Mexican-American War)

What would have happened if the United States had gone all the way after winning the Mexican-American War and capturing Mexico City, decided to annex all of Mexico? How would an American Mexico assimilate into the nation? Catholicism would be an issue for sure.
 
Many Mexicans would resist, and the now nearly inevitable Civil War would be a lot more interesting, in the Chinese sense of course. Mexicans were pretty much against slavery and attempts to make slave states in Mexico (as I'm sure the Southern aristocrats would try) would be a rallying point for resistance. And given that Mexico has a well-developed national indentity, and IOTL has resisted many foreign attempts to invade it (from Spanish reconquest to France to the USA itself multiple times) I can see the resistance being very strong indeed.

Given the track record for US colonialism in Latin America, I very much doubt they would be granted statehood or proper representation very soon, if at all. On the other hand, it would be a glaring hypocrisy to deny it to such a large land with so many people. I expect there will be attempts to give statehood to at least part of Mexico BUT with many strings attached, voting restricted to English speakers for example. Assimilation would be very hard: as has been pointed out in many similar threads, southern Mexico had a LOT more people than the conquered areas at the North.

Of course these policies are never conducive to social peace (as if often happens with wholesale annexation of nations) and I expect resistance to grow. Mexico is big, well-populated, has harsh terrain in many places, and a history of resistance against invaders. It's 19th century Vietnam but ten times bigger and next door. A prolonged resistance war might break the Union itself and I expect Mexicans to take a civil war as their best chance to go independent.
 
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