DBWI: A less powerful Mexico?

Hi, folks. Recently, I'd finished re-reading both Patrick Martin's classic 50 State America trilogy(TL-76 to the AH fan community), as well as the original fan spinoff, For Want of a Mission. (which went up until Jan. of 2001-25 years past the original, save a few excerpts at the end)

As much as I liked both of them, I can't help but wonder one thing at the moment; why, exactly, did he have Mexico go thru so much internal trouble during the 1820s and 1830s, and again from the late 1870s until the 1920s? IOTL, Mexico's republican system of government had it's troubles, but it never failed to the extent that it did under Santa Anna and certain other leaders did in that timeline. Granted, it was somewhat plausible on the whole, but I felt that Mexico could've done a lot better in regards to domestic policy, even if they still lost some of their northern territory; the bit about Porfirio Diaz, I felt, was particularly tragic, especially after coming after a man like Benito Juarez.
 
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mad orc

Banned
His timeline assumes that people like Juarez and Santa Anna survive their terms .
Its not like in OTL where Mexico is known as 'The nation of the dead presidents' .
His timeline allows all the 9 dead and 2 dishonored presidents and caudillos to continue on without what happened to them in OTL .
 
His timeline assumes that people like Juarez and Santa Anna survive their terms .
Its not like in OTL where Mexico is known as 'The nation of the dead presidents' .
His timeline allows all the 9 dead and 2 dishonored presidents and caudillos to continue on without what happened to them in OTL .

Granted, Agustin Iturbide and Santa Anna were pretty incompetent IOTL, too, but the thing is, Mexico's system of government-while still struggling with some issues-wasn't nearly as weak IOTL; even Iturbide's attempt to turn caudillo only lasted for 6 whole months before he was thrown out of office in October 1824(though whether or his July 1826 death was, in fact, a suicide, we may never know for sure). And Santa Anna never even got the chance to; he had the dubious honor of being one of only two Mexican presidents to be formally impeached in 1848(the other being Federico Garza in 1974, after he admitted to embezzling from the national treasury with the help of Russian and southern American mobsters).

As for the Presidents who died in office, I believe it was 5(Carlos Bustamante in 1851, Antonio Vega in 1883, Santiago Campos in 1926, Roberto Villar in 1978, and Teresa Mendoza in 2002-and of those, only Vega and Mendoza were assassinated; Vega was murdered as part of an extortion scheme, and Mendoza by a useful idiot from an extreme right-wing organization based here in the U.S. which was thankfully broken up at the end of 2008. Villar died in a plane crash and Bustamante & Campos were done in by natural causes), at least if you only count Presidents since Mexico formally secured it's independence in 1818, and you don't count the era when the Provisional government existed(if so, it goes up to 7 with Miguel Hidalgo and Mariano Matamoros, though it's debatable as to whether or Ignacio Allende or Francisco Mina were actually formal Presidents, per se-some historians do, but some don't).

BTW, I'd recently bookmarked the section on Mexico's Presidents on the Encyclopedia of Mexican History's official site if anybody would like to take a look-lots of fascinating stuff you can find there! :cool:
 
It seems unrealistic to me that Mexico would just allow American settlers into Texas. Texas' rich soil and ports were crucial in the development of Mexico into a global superpower. And the part where the Americans expand further west to California across the desert is a bit unrealistic. I get wanting Texas for more land for slave plantations, but the deserts and California just aren't good places for growing cotton.
 

Deleted member 97083

It seems unrealistic to me that Mexico would just allow American settlers into Texas. Texas' rich soil and ports were crucial in the development of Mexico into a global superpower. And the part where the Americans expand further west to California across the desert is a bit unrealistic. I get wanting Texas for more land for slave plantations, but the deserts and California just aren't good places for growing cotton.
Why wouldn't they?

American settlers in Texas wouldn't necessarily rebel. What reason would they have to rebel, anyway, given that any settlers would have to be abolitionists or neutrals, and not slavers, given Mexican law?

It was pretty common for any country with lowly settled territories to invite foreigners to form frontier settlements--look at the Volga Germans in Russia, or the French and Irish in U.S. Upper Louisiana.

In Mexico itself, Agustín Iturbide in fact allowed Chinese, German, and Japanese settlers in the Alta California territory. Not all expansion had to occur through domestic penal colonies and agrarian internal migration. Granted, the latter two factors were extraordinarily important in the settlement of the Provincias Internas, along with the gold rush of 1859.

My guess: American settlers in Texas would assimilate into Mexican society just like the Mormons.
 
It seems unrealistic to me that Mexico would just allow American settlers into Texas. Texas' rich soil and ports were crucial in the development of Mexico into a global superpower. And the part where the Americans expand further west to California across the desert is a bit unrealistic. I get wanting Texas for more land for slave plantations, but the deserts and California just aren't good places for growing cotton.

Mexico was rather weaker ITTL, though, and I should note that all but a few of the Americans who moved to California were anti-slavery. (Though I do generally agree that Martin screwed Mexico a bit too much in that war, nonetheless-the Americans even being able to march into Mexico City? Yeah, that bit was definitely questionable, TBH.)

Why wouldn't they?

American settlers in Texas wouldn't necessarily rebel. What reason would they have to rebel, anyway, given that any settlers would have to be abolitionists or neutrals, and not slavers, given Mexican law?

That was true IOTL, thanks to Nicolas Bravo, but Mexico in FiftySA did not originally ban slavers, and I believe the author himself stated some years ago, that the reason for this was that Mexico was more desperate to get settlers to move into Tejas y Coahuila(or Texas, as modern Tejas is still called by many Anglos in Mexico today)-don't quite remember all the factors involved but he did seem to go into detail from what I do recall.

It was pretty common for any country with lowly settled territories to invite foreigners to form frontier settlements--look at the Volga Germans in Russia, or the French and Irish in U.S. Upper Louisiana.

Not to mention the Dutch and Chinese in Australia, the Indians in South America, and not to mention the people of the multitude of nationalities from East and West that the U.S. convinced to settle down in the former Oregon Country.(40 million people live in that whole area now, including nearly 20 million just in Cascadia alone.), or the Scandinavians + dissident Russians and Ukrainians that were directed to the Canadian province of Alaska.

In Mexico itself, Agustín Iturbide in fact allowed Chinese, German, and Japanese settlers in the Alta California territory. Not all expansion had to occur through domestic penal colonies and agrarian internal migration. Granted, the latter two factors were extraordinarily important in the settlement of the Provincias Internas, along with the gold rush of 1859.

Erm, you're thinking of Carlos Bustamante, actually; Iturbide died 20 years before that program began(and Japanese immigrants wouldn't start coming to any place in large numbers until the Americans opened the country up just prior to the Civil War). But yes, this is true, regardless, especially in regards to agrarian migration.

My guess: American settlers in Texas would assimilate into Mexican society just like the Mormons.

Perhaps so, and Mexico avoiding the pitfalls it faced in FiftySA shouldn't be that hard.
 
Mexico was rather weaker ITTL, though, and I should note that all but a few of the Americans who moved to California were anti-slavery.

Exactly, and by having anti-slavery Americans be the one's moving west, there is no clear motive. The US wanted Texas for more land for plantations. The expansion to the Pacific made no sense. The whole "Manifest Destiny" thing was just an unrealistic copy and paste of Mexico's expansion into Oregón, Montaña, and Oclajoma following the American-Mexican War and Panama following the Colombian-Mexican War.
 
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