Mexico

Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (The United Mexican States) (or simply Mexico) is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a federal district, the capital Mexico City, whose metropolitan area is one of the world's most populous.

In the 15th and early 16th centuries, the Aztec Empire dominated what is now the southern part of Mexico. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, the region became the seat of New Spain. After nearly 3 centuries as part of the Spanish Empire, the Mexicans began to desire independence. A failed uprising for independence in 1810-1811 was followed by a successful one in 1821, and the annexation of other hitherto Spanish colonies including California and Texas. Mexico was the largest political entity in North America for barely more than two decades. After the Texas War of Independence (1836). the Mexican-American War (1846-8), and the Gadsden Purchase (1854), Mexico was reduced to a rump state with borders that are retained today.

Between 1823 and 1876, Mexico had a slew of civil wars, coups d'etat, and drastic shifts of government, including the short-lived Second Mexican Empire (1864-7) which existed in France's sphere of influence. Autocratic President Porfirio Diaz maintained a secure dictatorship from 1876-1911, but in his weakening years was overthrown and there began a new decade of internal strife, defined by larger-than-life figures such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. Since the 1920s, Mexico has avoided a recurrence of this problem, and had a stable continuity of government. However, it has been infamously unable to eradicate the violent and unpredictable activities of drug cartels and other crime syndicates within its borders, and the conditions of poverty which cause droves of its citizens to defect to the United States.

Mexico in "Eyewear"
From 1528 to 1536, several members of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition crossed Mexico on foot coast to coast, heading west. Only four survivors reached Culiacán in 1536: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and a slave named Estevánico. Their survival was due in large part to a pair of magical eyewear.

Mexico in "Secret Names"
Makykano was a region in Mexico and the west and south part of the former state of Texas where clans of hunter-gathers resided some two hundred years after the world wide calamity called the Big Oops. To the north and east were the tribes of the Eestexas region with which the Makykanoes would on occasion trade and on others war.

Mexico in Southern Victory
 Mexico had declared independence from Spain during the 19th century, but a rather chaotic government led to a disastrous war with the United States, causing the loss of half it's territory. In the wars aftermath, Mexico went through a series of violent internal conflicts as one faction after another attempted to take control.

In the 1860s, France established the Hapsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria as Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, with support from the Roman Catholic clergy and conservative elements of the upper class as well as some indigenous communities. This move firmly established the Second Mexican Empire, however "empire" in this context simply means that Mexico is a monarchy, not that its foreign policy is imperialism.

The United States frowned upon this move, which was considered a gross interference by a European power in its sphere of influence contrary to the Monroe Doctrine. The survival of Maximilian in power and his ability to establish the Mexican Hapsburg Dynasty was mainly due to the victory of the Confederacy in the War of Secession, which changed the strategic situation. The Confederacy itself had been able to secure its independence due to French (as well as British) support, and was perforce supportive of the French project in neighboring Mexico. Moreover, having an unpopular ruler in Mexico, needing Confederate help to survive, was well suited to serve the Confederate design of expanding westward and gaining a foothold on the Pacific.

Despite resistance from within Maximilian and his dynasty were able to keep power, mainly thanks to Confederate and French support. Having been established for two decades and achieving successfully, after Maximilian's death, the transition to his successor, Maximilian II, the Mexican Habsburgs paid off their Confederate benefactors. Desperate for money, Maximilian II sold Sonora and Chihuahua to the Confederacy in 1881 for three million dollars, starting the Second Mexican War when the USA opposed this land exchange. Mexico's role during that war was limited to providing naval bases for French warships.

The Empire of Mexico joined the Entente in the Great War, ironically placing the Mexican Habsburgs at the side of the enemies of the parent dynasty at Austria-Hungary. Mexican troops only fought in defense of Baja California - where, fighting on inhospitable soil they knew well, their determined resistance surprised and dismayed the invading US troops. The US quickly decided that the loss of life in a backwater was not worth it. The successful defence of Baja California helped salve Mexican national pride but after the war Mexico was forced to pay reparations to the winning Central Powers.

US President Theodore Roosevelt helped foment a rebellion against the empire shortly after the Great War ended in 1917. The Mexican Civil War continued until the mid-1920s. The battles around San Luis Potosi were notable for the semi-legal use of CS-made barrels. Thousands of CS veterans from both the Freedom Party and other organizations served as mercenaries for the monarchist faction supporting the emperor, Maximilian III, while the Popular Revolutionaries withered and died from lack of effective US support. For the Confederates, involvement in the Mexican war served the double purpose of maintaining the status of Mexico as a Confederate satellite and trying out weapons and troops for the coming war with the US in a way impossible in Confederate territory due to the restrictions placed on the Confederacy in the 1917 Armistice. Among other things, it was in Mexico at this time that Jefferson Pinkard gained his first experience as the commandant of a prison camp.

The victory of the Mexican monarchists with the help of the Confederate Freedom Party gave an additional lease on life to the semi-feudal landowners in the Mexican countryside, strongly resented by the exploited peasants. Ironically, once it came to power the Freedom Party undertook, in the annexed Sonora and Chihuahua, a diametrically opposite policy of mobilizing the peasants against the landowners and thus built itself a strong popular base of support in the Hispanic areas of the Confederacy.

In 1941, Mexico joined the Second Great War by declaring war upon the Central Powers, although little if any fighting occurred between US and Mexican forces during the first year. Confederate President Jake Featherston persuaded Emperor Francisco José II to provide the Veracruz Division and two other divisions for CS use during its offensive against Pittsburgh, Operation Coalscuttle in 1942; these formations were destroyed by the counter-offensive led by General Irving Morrell. Afterward, Featherston extorted five more Mexican divisions from Francisco José, this time for use against Negro partisans.

At the same time thousands of unemployed Mexicans were permitted to immigrate to the CSA doing menial jobs formerly held by Negroes. This was part of the Freedom Party's plan to rid the CSA of its black residents while ensuring that whites didn't have to do 'nigger work' themselves. The threat of deporting newly employed Mexicans back home to make trouble was a useful diplomatic tool for President Featherston.

The Mexican army during both wars wore yellowish-khaki that was well suited to Mexico's northern deserts, though it was less useful in Pennsylvania. During the Second Great War, Mexican troops were ill-supplied with machine guns, barrels, and artillery, though at least each man had a rifle. They proved courageous enough and valuable in holding quiet sectors, but were unable to stand up to US offensives. Moreover, in this war they were unable to hold on to Baja California, where the combined US naval and land offensive was far more determined than in the previous war.

Thus, the Mexican military role in the war was minor. However, Mexico's role in implementing the Population Reduction in the C.S. was indispensable.

Although very much a junior partner in the alliance, Francisco José was one of the few Entente heads of state to survive the war without being killed or overthrown.

Mexico in The Disunited States of America
Randolph Brooks and other Crosstime employees operated in an alternate where Mexico followed the former United States' pattern of independence and dissolution into several countries. The region was still referred to as the "Mexican states". Among them were Monterrey and Baja California.

Mexico in The Guns of the South
Under Emperor Maximilian I, Mexico extended recognition to the Confederate States after the Army of Northern Virginia took Washington City in 1864, winning the Second American Revolution.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis wondered if an arrangement might be made to extend a rail line from Texas through Mexican territory to the Pacific Ocean. Secretary of State Judah Benjamin preferred that such a railroad be entirely within C.S. territory, but General Robert E. Lee countered that gaining territory would mean more fighting (against Mexico and/or the United States), and the C.S. were in no shape for another war. The future relationship between the Empire and the Confederacy was still being debated in 1868, when Lee was president.

In 1867, Benito Juárez' insurgency failed to restore a republic in Mexico, due to the United States' forces once again being diverted elsewhere, this time to the war in the Canadas.

Mexico in The Two Georges
Mexico was a province of Nueva España. It lay to the south of the three provinces that bordered the North American Union. To the east was the province of Yucatan and to the south the province of Guatemala.

Mexico in Worldwar
Mexico had declared war on the Axis powers on the May 22, 1942, but was in no condition to fight. When the Race landed in June 1942, Mexico was easily overwhelmed, due to their low industrial capacity and the arid environment which favoured the Race. Within three months of the invasion, all of Mexico had been conquered. At the Peace of Cairo in 1944, Mexico was recognised as Race territory. It was the only Race holding which shared a border with the United States. Launching an invasion of the US from Mexico would not have been an easy task as the front would expand as the invader advanced.

In the years after the fighting ended, Ginger smuggling became common in Mexico. One of Penny Summers' best clients, Kahanass, resided at a Race airbase in Nuevo León. Summers, Kahanass, and Rance Auerbach were arrested by Race authorities in a sting in 1962.

When the Colonization Fleet arrived, it introduced plant and animal life native to Home to Mexico. Some of these plants and animals migrated north of the border into the southwestern US. The Race largely ignored the US's complaints. By that time, rule by the Race was well enough established in Mexico that much border regulation and other routine police matters were entrusted to humans in the Race's service.

The Mexican flag flew in the palace of the 37th Emperor Risson in Preffilo on Home, among the other flags of conquered Tosevite empires and not-empires and the banners of all the once-independent empires of Rabotev 2, Halless 1, and ancient Home.

Literary Comment
While Harry Turtledove does make it clear that an entity known as Mexico exists in Terranova at roughly the same location the OTL country does, he does not describe it in any detail.