If we still had Texas…

Donald,

That simple, huh? Sigh…

I doubt that having Texas today would make matters a heck of a lot better. Especially when looking at as mentioned the vast resources that Mexcio has now.

It is sort of like saying , even though more extreme, good golly if Russia had not sold Alaska, then the Soviet Union would be a rip roaring success.

Perhaps having Mexico closer to the East and the Mississippi River and various AMerica trade routes would have helped. However look at their promixiety to California.

Actually Michael it is easy to say based on the past history of Mexico. The problem is the Mexican government not lack of resources or land. I hope the young man in question will someday play a role in leading Mexico to a future where conditions will be so improved that Mexico will not be exporting millions of people to a foreign country in order to earn a living.

I would tend to agree with Donald R. Every report you ever hear of someone trying to start a business in Mexico results in stories of having to bribe local law enforcement, local political leaders, and sometime political leaders higher up the food chain.

What other reason would there be for such an inept economy?

Policraticus, did you explain to the young boy that the lack of land is not the problem of Mexico. In fact, I think Texas is probably an excellent example of the point Donald is trying to make.

The post even claims that ‘Texas and Mexico are similar in climate and topography’. Yet the difference in economic situations are extremely different. Is it because of the abundant amount of resources in Texas that are lacking in Mexico. No. It is in the political climate of the two different governments.

Just a disclaimer, I am not against immigration, so please don’t scoff at this post. I would really like an honest answer as to what other possibilities could be the cause of Mexico’s problems? If someone knows, please enlighten me, instead of scoffing about cluelessness.

The reason why the loss of half its territory mattered to Mexico has as much to do with what it meant for the US as for what it meant for Mexico. If the US had been caged and confined east of the Mississipi, it could never have become a superpower and takien over from Britain as the world hegemon: it would have merely been one power among many, and Mexico would have expanded into the Pacific, absobed Spain’s remaining possessions there, such as the Philippines, and been the major “western” power that confronted and influenced Japan. US fantasies of manifest destiny etc, would have been dead in the water if the North American continent had been more or less equally divied into three or four rather than one and a half (as most of Canada is rather inhospitable!). Perhaps the North would have sought to secede from the South, rather than vice versa. Protestant and WASP cultural hegemony would have not been quite so pronounced as as the global supremacy of Britain dissolved, it would have been replaced by several powers, instead of by one, and quite possibly the North American Indians might have fared somewhat better.

For a fascinating insight into the emergence of the various polities of Latin America and the roots of many of their subsequent problems I heartily recommend The Independence of Latin America 1808-1826 by Jaime Rodriguez O which reframes the discussion by showing how the Spanish Monarchy was conceptualised by its inhabitants at the time, and especially by its political elites as not an empire consisting of metrople and colonies, but as a vast trans-oceanic commonwealth, whose vice-royalties (eg New Spain or New Grenada or Peru or La Plata etc.) were considered as much component kingdoms as Castile or Aragon. Thus what transpires in the period covered by the book is not the revolt of colonies from the metropole but rather the dissolution and shattering of this commonwealth into its component parts, one of which was Spain (sensu strictu) itself, and that this shattering was the shattering of a socio-economic as much as political unity and that this accounts for much of the weaknesses of the subsequent “daughter states” (including Spain itself). He covers much fascinating material, including the Spanish Constitution of 1812, drawn up by the revolutionary cortes of Cadiz with massive input from deputies elected in the American kingdoms, and which gave every non-African male adult inhabitant of the monarchy the vote (including the Indians), and the various power struggles that developed across the Monarchy between different groups that eventually brought about its dissolution. He makes the point that whereas after the US emerged Europe almost immediately went to war, thus providing the young republic with 20 years of boom demand for its products from all sides, this was not the case for the splintered fragments of the former Spanish Monarchy, who had to make their way in a world in which Britain now firmly ruled the waves, and the US was in ruddy health as its little borther. Turning the fragments into viable capitalist nation-states was no easy matter when the nation that the Spanish “bourgeois revolution” had attempted to transform was now in several pieces. A summary of his book, among other things, can be found on the internet in an article entitled “The Emancipation of America”.