However, none of this means an independent hispanic California would end up with the world's 9th largest economy in 2009. This never happened anywhere else in Latin America and it's hard to imagine that, without the influx of American settlers and capital, California would be anything other than a much smaller, less populated, and more impovershed version of Mexico.
More than a little condescension and smug superiority in this assumption.
Fact is, California did not become the wealthy and populous state it did until the boom caused by WWII. Los Angeles was a much smaller city as recently as the 1930s. (Heck, some people would still say it isn't so much a city as a collection of suburbs joined together by growth.)
Has there ever been a POD written up with a largely Latino California during the Gold Rush? Or how a Gold Rush would affect a Mexico that had not lost its territory during the US Mexican War?
I think it'd be interesting to see how it would play out since Spain and Mexico practiced assimilation (often very violently) of its Indians rather than the genocide and widespread enslavement of Indians that was carried out by Anglo invaders during the Gold Rush.
We might look at how the history of Sonora played out in Mexico for an example. Sonora holds the same place in Mexican popular culture that the Old West did for Americans during the greatest popularity of Westerns.
You would see a period of boom for the state no different economically than during the US Gold Rush, both in wealth and population. There'd still likely be violence vs Asian immigrants since Mexico has its own periods of hysteria about the "Yellow Peril."
I can't see a Californian independence though.