DBWI: US Doesn't Anex Yucatan Peninsula

AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

OTL, James K. Polk got an offer he couldn't refuse- a yucatan rebellion that wanted to join the Union. Naturally, an expansionist southerner like him took the offer. Of course this mean he needed yet another free territory to keep the senatorial balance and prevent chaos in the north. So he made an offer on Russian America, now known as Alaska. It wasn't as popular as the other territory he'd claimed, but did secure the senatorial balance. Amusingly, during the Civil War, the south briefly considered setting up shop in the Yucatan to escape the yankees, but not only did the north have too big a navy for this, the union navy was far better trained with better morale, and Gettysburg had already passed by this point, making any attempt to flee look cowardly and moot.

After Theodore Roosevelt's war with Spain, it was said that the caribbean was an american lake.

But what if Polk turned down the offer or the rebellion never happened? What would happen?
 

The Uchronian

Interesting question!

Firstly, though, if I may.....you may want to keep in mind that while Polk did have some expansionist ambitions, they were initially limited to mainly Texas and what's now the Pacific NW and parts of British Columbia up to 54'40* North-the Yucatan thing really only came around because negotiations around how to deal with California statehood failed at nearly the last minute (partly because he was fairly hesitant to deal with that mess in the first place), and had it not been for the suggestion of the man who replaced Nicholas Trist, it's very unlikely it would have happened at all, especially considering the backlash that came from mainly the South of all places(remember, initially many of the Southerners only wanted Texas at first, and they really only accepted CA's annexation at all because 1. there weren't that many Native Americans around compared to the Yucatan, and 2. some of them hoped that at least SoCal + Baja could be broken off and made into at least a semi-viable slave state; the opposition to Yucatan statehood was mostly a matter of factor #1).

As for Alaska.....though it *is* true that we did buy it off Russia in Jan. 1849, just before Polk's term ended, in regards to the state balance thing, I think you might have accidentally confused it with Minnesota, as Alaska didn't become a state until 1907(and even then, only because of a personal push by then President Robert Todd Lincoln-AK only had 50,000 people then), whereas MN was admitted in 1848, the same year that the Yucatan was.
 
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Corjomc

I would miss the 1st Yucaton Battalion, the Fighting Yukes, and how their contributions in the Great War helped lead to Statehood for the territory.
 
lerk

lerk

Yucatan's politics today is divided between white settlers and native Hispanics. This has led to violence, such as the period from the 1960s-1990s known as "The Troubles", when the Yucatan Liberation Army waged an insurgency in the state. Thankfully the 1994 Washington Peace Accords ended much of the violence, though a small-scale insurgency still persists. The current administration is right-wing, alienating Hispanics in Yucatan and other areas in America. Not only that, but the devastation caused by Hurricane Ted, along with the administration's tepid response, may lead to separatism becoming more popular. Of course, this begs the question - will most separatism be peaceful, or will it be violent, like the YLA?
 
AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Corjomc said:
I would miss the 1st Yucaton Battalion, the Fighting Yukes, and how their contributions in the Great War helped lead to Statehood for the territory.
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Fair, but I don't think anyone would miss the war itself. After Polk spent his entire presidency balancing peace and war against each other to expand the nation, for Taylor to muck it up and drag us into a war with France and Russia-who we'd just bought land off of... not a good look. Even if we won, using our own naval buildup to challenge France so we could go help Prussia and Italy.

((Ooc: older post mentionsd the state being admitted in 1848 so I had to mess with Europe a bit. RIP
 

Walle Ras

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For depriving us of one of the best sabaton songs, Jaguars of France.
 
AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

My sincerest apologies for robbing the world of the majestic Jaguars of France, but does anyone have any ideas for geopolitical butterflies?
 

ASUKIRIK

Banned
KingOnTheEdge said:
My sincerest apologies for robbing the world of the majestic Jaguars of France, but does anyone have any ideas for geopolitical butterflies?
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There won't be the Aztlan Republic succeeding the imploding, broken Mexico... That Aztec-supremacist state was the biggest nutjobs with siege mentality in The World, expelling everyone who is visibly White and basically trying to recreate the Aztec Empire, no matter the cost...
 

thekingsguard

I mean, as others pointed out, between the gains in the First Mexican-American War, and the annexation of Yucatan, it made the Gulf of Mexico an American lake... and pretty much cemented Mexico as a future enemy of the USA, between taking another bite of the north in the Second Mexican-American War, and the Aztlan Revolution.

Do we still buy Alaksa without Yucatan? Hell, without Alaska, does Seward still buy Western Canada from Britian?
 

brokenrobot00

The Yucatan joining the union was part of a chain reaction of the disintegration of old Mexico. Though the Aztlan Republic still exists it really didn't have much of a chance of spreading past the Valley of Mexico and surrounding states. Strong American presence to the south in Yucatan and in the north along the border with the Continental United States. Having little interest getting involved in the civil war itself the American Government funded and supported various separatist groups to isolate Aztlan and bring them to the bargaining table. This resulted in the map we see today. In what were the Northern most territories of Mexico referendums took place and all admited to the USA. On the new border The Republic of the Rio Grande consisting of Taumalipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila, and Cortez (formally the Union of the Sea of Cortez) consisting of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa, were created as buffer states. The most important buffer state was the New Mexican Republic. Oddly enough this are was only historically lightly populated by the Mexica peoples and didn't contain the Valley of Mexico. Consisting of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas it would eventually become home to the Veracruz Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with American support under the first Roosevelt administration.
 
Dolan

Dolan

Banned
brokenrobot00 said:
all admited to the USA
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Which makes the existence of Aztlan as hostile, independent nation-state even more amusing as they were literally surrounded on all sides by the USA.

Yes, there are still active discrimination against Nahuatl speakers in the USA, but it was borne out of a century of bad bloods between them.
 

brokenrobot00

Dolan said:
Yes, there are still active discrimination against Nahuatl speakers in the USA, but it was borne out of a century of bad bloods between them.
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The anti-Nahuatl and anti-Aztec laws came out of the early 1900's when the priesthood took over the Aztlan Republic and turned it into a religious state. Movies were something brand new and Aztlan were an early adopter of that technology and industry. All of a sudden there were short films of foreigners suspected of spying Americans among them being hauled up on top of what used to be the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral and having their hearts cut out with a glass knife. Everyone on the continent was terrified of Quezacoatl cultists. That 3 year reign of terror by the Pagan Priesthood destroyed the nations reputation for decades and lead to a coup by the military.
 

Galba Otho Vitelius

There are actually some butterflies involving the southern border of the continental USA.

The Americans had plans to take more of California, and also to take some additional territory from the Mexican state of Sonora to run another railroad to the Pacific. Given the outcry over the cession of Yucatan, the Mexicans refused to go along and that ended the matter. So for railroad geeks, we lost a railroad, and there were some butterflies with California as well. The US Navy had plans to develop a major naval base in San Diego harbor, so the principal naval base on the West Coast would be there instead of Alameda. The character of the San Francisco Bay area would be hugely altered without all the military installations and military personnel. Also San Clemente would not be the somewhat shady border city that it is now, some other city to the south would fulfill that roll. With the railroad and the military installations, the southern part of California would be much more populated than at present. It might absorb some of the people who IOTL moved to Yucatan.

As for Mexico, its not well known, but Napoleon originally offered to make Archduke Maximillian, brother of Franz Josef, his puppet Emperor of Mexico, but Maximillian turned it down. Max was one of the more liberal Hapsburgs and seeems to have been quite capable. He might of accepted the offer if Mexico was a more viable country. Instead the position was offered to Prince Luigi of the Two Sicilies, who accepted, and we all know how that turned out.
 
Alienspacebats

Alienspacebats

¿Amigos? You believe this garbage? They act this isn't white minority state. Brutal caste war happened and they act like it Yankee Doodle.
 
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Galba Otho Vitelius

One peculiarity of Americans is that they like to admit states in pairs, so without Yucatan you are probably getting 50 states, not 52. WIthout the precedent of admitting a majority Spanish speaking state, I suspect New Mexico gets admitted a lot latter and Puerto Rico never becomes a state.
 
AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Galba Otho Vitelius said:
One peculiarity of Americans is that they like to admit states in pairs, so without Yucatan you are probably getting 50 states, not 52. WIthout the precedent of admitting a majority Spanish speaking state, I suspect New Mexico gets admitted a lot latter and Puerto Rico never becomes a state.
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Ya know, I never got why we had Cuba and Puerto Rico administered as both the same territory, and as one state, then went with the smaller one as the state name (i mean Taft was a bit Daft, but not that bad)
 
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