What if the Californios and other Hispanic landowner class in the territories the U.S. won in the Mexican-American War were not expelled or otherwise disenfranchised, but continued to live in those lands and maintain influence there, if less power? Would those states have become like Quebec, dual-identity lands with a bilingual nature?
In California, at any rate, any situation remotely resembling Quebec was out of the question for demographic reasons: "When the United States and Mexico went to war in 1846, California was under the loose control of the Mexican government. California's population consisted of about 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican decent), 700 foreigners (primarily Americans), and 150,000 Native Americans, whose numbers had been cut in half since the arrival of the Spanish in 1769"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/e_goldrush.html Just by 1854, over 300,000 settlers had arrived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California The Californios were bound to lose their influence--they were simply swamped (and discriminated against but *not* expelled, not even totally disenfranchised: the California constitution of 1849 provided that "Every white male citizen of the United States, and every white male citizen of Mexico, who shall have elected to become a citizen of the United States, under the treaty of peace exchanged and ratified at Queretaro, on the 30th day of May, 1848 of the age of twenty–one years, who shall have been a resident of the State six months next preceding the election, and the county or district in which he claims his vote thirty days, shall be entitled to vote at all elections which are now or hereafter may authorized by law: Provided, nothing herein contained, shall be construed to prevent the Legislature, by a two–thirds concurrent vote, from admitting to the right of suffrage, Indians or the descendants of Indians, in such special cases as such proportion of the legislative body may deem just and proper."
http://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/collections/constitutions/1849/full-text/ That last clause was inserted at the insistence of Californio delegates worried that the "white" requirement would be used to disenfranchise mestizos.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Cip2kdlUdFoC&pg=PA45)
And they didn't even lose *all* their influence--at least not at once. "Many ranch owners with their thousands of acres and large herds of cattle, sheep and horses went on to live prosperous lives under U.S. rule. Former commander of the California Lancers
Andrés Pico became a U.S. citizen after his return to California and acquired the
Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando ranch which makes up large part of what is present day Los Angeles. He went on to become a California State Assemblyman and later a California State Senator. His brother former governor of
Alta California (under Mexican rule)
Pío Pico also became a U.S. citizen and a prominent ranch owner/businessman in California after the war. Many others were not so fortunate as droughts decimated their herds in the early 1860s and they could not pay back the high cost mortgages (poorly understood by the mostly illiterate ranchers) they had taken out to improve their lifestyle and subsequently lost much or all of their property when they could not be repaid."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californio#Californios_after_U.S._annexation OTOH, by 1857 even a well-to-do landowner (and signer of the 1849 California Constitution and Los Angeles County Supervisor) was barred from testifying in a San Francisco court because of his "Indian blood"!
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZRnjfZeIt7UC&pg=PA202
In New Mexico Territory, OTOH, Hispanos remained influential:
"The Civil War created new opportunities for Anglo lawyers and businessmen who had moved into the territory to seek their fortunes. A political scene with so much active ferment provided tantalizing opportunities for enterprising
Hispanos who were willing to work with U.S. officials and Anglo outsiders to acquire greater political and economic dominance in the territory.
"Built on a partnership between these two groups, the Santa Fe Ring was the first and perhaps the most notable political machine in New Mexico’s history.71 This Republican-oriented group dominated territorial politics in the latter 19th century, counting among its ranks nearly every governor of the territory and most federal officials from 1865 through the late 1880s. From the mid-1860s to the early 1880s, a string of
Hispanos were elected Delegate on the Republican ticket..."
http://history.house.gov/Exhibition...s/Continental-Expansion/New-Mexican-Politics/