This is a tough challenge. The Mexican Empire is, after all, one of the most powerful nations on earth. Perhaps it's best to start at the beginning?
Well, there was some things to consider. I am proud of my Mexican hertiage, but man we had some close calls. Alot of the revolutionaries nearly died early on and Santa Anna is stil viewed as the goddamn lunatic that he was. If he became president, he would've weakened Mexico big time.
Fortunately the Empire prevented him from taking power. Incidentally, a good POD could be Augustin II dying prior to the First Mexican-American War. That could be a destabilizing factor.Well, there was some things to consider. I am proud of my Mexican hertiage, but man we had some close calls. Alot of the revolutionaries nearly died early on and Santa Anna is stil viewed as the goddamn lunatic that he was. If he became president, he would've weakened Mexico big time.
Fortunately the Empire prevented him from taking power. Incidentally, a good POD could be Augustin II dying prior to the First Mexican-American War. That could be a destabilizing factor.
Another element would be it becoming an absolute monarchy rather than a constitutional elected monarchy. The latter served as a unique compromise to better help out the people. It definitely helped us out when the Central American Confederacy joined up with us. It's why we were able to build the canal without too much trouble.
There was an alternative history novel about Mexico by a Mexican author, "So Far from God, so Close to the United States" that inspired this. The novel was a pretty extreme Mexican screw, but I was wondering if something could be done more historically grounded, without the magical realism.
In the novel, the Triple Alliance really ramps up the human sacrifice that sometimes did happen before the conversion to Christianity to extreme levels, pissing off the other city states. As a result, when the first group of armed Europeans -they were Castillians in this time line- arrive everyone sides with them and they wind up taking over the entire place. Mexico becomes a colony for hundreds of years, with its silver shipped off to Castille obviously but also to China for some reason. They finally get independence in the nineteenth century, but the attempt to set up a monarchy fails twice (!), and the English speaking colonists in North America unite in a super-federation that takes over several important Mexican states and generally treats the place as a pinata. In the twentieth century, after another civil war, they wind up rule by this mediocre Chicago-style political machine, which at least provides better government than they had so far in the book.
I get the POD, but I don't know how this creates the English speaking super-federation to the North. Also, I'd imagine all that silver being shipped to Castille and to China would have pretty extensive effects on European and Chinese history, but the book only covers North America.
There was an alternative history novel about Mexico by a Mexican author, "So Far from God, so Close to the United States" that inspired this. The novel was a pretty extreme Mexican screw, but I was wondering if something could be done more historically grounded, without the magical realism.
In the novel, the Triple Alliance really ramps up the human sacrifice that sometimes did happen before the conversion to Christianity to extreme levels, pissing off the other city states. As a result, when the first group of armed Europeans -they were Castillians in this time line- arrive everyone sides with them and they wind up taking over the entire place. Mexico becomes a colony for hundreds of years, with its silver shipped off to Castille obviously but also to China for some reason. They finally get independence in the nineteenth century, but the attempt to set up a monarchy fails twice (!), and the English speaking colonists in North America unite in a super-federation that takes over several important Mexican states and generally treats the place as a pinata. In the twentieth century, after another civil war, they wind up rule by this mediocre Chicago-style political machine, which at least provides better government than they had so far in the book.
I get the POD, but I don't know how this creates the English speaking super-federation to the North. Also, I'd imagine all that silver being shipped to Castille and to China would have pretty extensive effects on European and Chinese history, but the book only covers North America.
Not quite that tough, TBH, depending on the POD. The Mexican Empire was actually somewhat weak and/or unstable at several points in its history; for one of the biggest example, the country's government nearly outright collapsed during The Troubles in the mid 1950s, with the Anglo & Irish separatists in northern + eastern Tejas(some of them descended from those fleeing the collapse of American Federation of Sovereign States[1]), the Chinese in much of coastal Alta California and ethnic Germans and Austrians in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, etc., amongst certain others, protesting for various reasons[2], as well as a majorly bad recession, and it took a massive amount of foreign aid-some from Canada but also Japan, Brazil, France, Italy and two dozen other countries, just to finally stabilize the situation, and then you had the independence movements (and the Mormon unification movements, also a bit of an issue for Cascadia too) of the '60s, all of which caused further headaches of their own.
Honestly, were it not for Empress Teresa's much needed reforms, Mexico might not be the prosperous & highly influential nation that it is today.
[1]Yes, that slavery-defending abomination of a nation. Not all of those fleeing where dedicated slaveholders, true, but even so.....
[2]Mexico was a pretty troubled place back then. It's too complicated for me to articulate all at once right now, but historian Veronica Robles helped put up a vast library of GlobeNet accessible resources at the University of Mexico City back in the late '90s. Here's the link.
OOC: To expand further, some more ideas.
[1]Broke away from the Federated States in 1871 over slavery, but dissolved in 1917 after several years of internal turmoil; three of the countries which border Mexico on it's northern flank are here ITTL-the Louisiana Free State, the Free State of Arkansas, and the Confederacy of the Four Nations, were once part of it's territory. All are democracies, Louisiana and the CFN being particularly close to Mexico.
[2]The others are the Kansas Free State, the Prairie Republic, Deseret(northern *Utah, with a few bits and pieces of what would have been the neighboring states of Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, and Wyoming), and the aforementioned Cascadia. All are also democracies in 2018 ITTL, with Deseret being the most conservative, and Cascadia being the most liberal.
Have the Southrons fight them in a war and have the Southrons win.