Mexican California

How can Mexico stand up to the rising giant that was the United States and retain control over California?

I was tempted to place this as a challenge, since little Mexico against the huge US seemed a bit of an uneven affair, but I decided that there must be some plausible possibility for Mexico to keep it without having to resort to a challenge.
 
I don't think a non-American Mexico is hard; have a settler revolt like in Texas, and boom, it's good. Keeping it Mexican, though, requires a drastic change in Mexico's government.
 

Jasen777

Donor
In a few years Mexico was likely to loose California to settlers even without a war with the U.S. You really need a pre Mexican Independence PoD for this to work.
 
Retention of California by Mexico is very hard. The province was isolated from Mexico by deserts and hostile indian tribes in OTL Arizona, New Mexico and Northern Mexico. With overland travel extremely difficult that left voyage by sea as the safest and fastest for the time. California was ignored by the Mexican government and local Californios looked forward to either annexation by Britain or the United States. Like most of Northern Mexico in the 1840s the population was few and far between.
 
Most of the what is currently the south western US is was more like part of the greater Mexican empire. I don't think Mexico really started developing a strong identity until the American/Mexican war (Not an expert on this, please correct me if I am wrong).

So in order for Mexico to keep California and/or the other bits of the empire they need to:
1. Beat the US during this war.
2. Retake Texas.
3. Send lots of settlers to these areas.
 
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