Would the southwest still be Mexican today if Texas would have lost their Revolution to Mexico? (war, state)

[David674UT]

I have a feeling the USA would have found some way to annex the southwest as part of Manifest Destiny. It might have been decades later however. What do y'all think?

[Dd714]

yeah agree - Mexico could not manage those portions of the southwest now belonging to the US, it was too distant from the capital and to full of gringoes. That applies to both California and Texas.

But the success of the Texas war of independence was never officially recognized by Mexico. The Republic of Texas, from Mexico's standpoint, remained a renegade province until the Mexican War with the US some 10 years later.

[rhinestone]

The US had tried to buy Texas twice before and been rebuffed. The Texas "revolution" was just their third try. The US would have kept going. Notice they scooped up everything west of Texas too.

[jtur88]

Once it was known that there was gold in Colorado and California, nothing would have stopped the US seizure of the territory.

[CAVA1990]

I don't see why the Mexican war wouldn't have happened anyway. That was a lot more instrumental in winning the Southwest than the uprising in Texas, which was somewhat irrelevant.

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by David674UT

I have a feeling the USA would have found some way to annex the southwest as part of Manifest Destiny. It might have been decades later however. What do y'all think?

An imperial America was on the menu from the end of the Revolution, the Founders were mad for the idea of annexing this, conquoring that. Northern Mexico would have been conquored by the Americans in any case.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Once it was known that there was gold in Colorado and California, nothing would have stopped the US seizure of the territory.

Not to mention that there were revolts throughout Mexico during Santa Anna's day, not just in Texas but also in many of the Mexican states, not to mention the Caste War, in which the Mayans tried to take back Yucatan. The elites in Yucatan made gestures to the USA and the British Empire to step in and take over as they saw Santa Anna as unable to protect them from the Mayans. Merida/Progreso was more connected to the Caribbean and New Orleans than to Mexico City ; there were no roads connecting Merida and DF in the 19th century, and travel to and from Merida at the time was exclusively conducted by sea.

At the time of the Mexican War, there was no Mexican national identity. People identified with their regions not with the country. The only people who would have considered themselves to be "Mexican" would have been those living in Mexico City and the Valley of Mexico (the present day DF, State of Mexico, and maybe Hidalgo and Morelos - possibly Puebla?) Benito Juarez created the Mexican national identity. Mexican historians have said that if not for the French invasion there was a strong chance Mexico would have splintered into several nations, and some of those may have been annexed by the US. (Yucatan could've wound up as a British colony, as mentioned above, or, if the Mayans had won the Caste War, could have wound up as the other Latin American nation which had an indigenous language as a co-official language with Spanish....)

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by majoun

Not to mention that there were revolts throughout Mexico during Santa Anna's day, not just in Texas but also in many of the Mexican states, not to mention the Caste War, in which the Mayans tried to take back Yucatan.

That's a good point. It's really amazing that Mexico survived as one state in the size that it is. Texas wasn't the only renegade province. Santa Anna spent almost a decade just marching his army from this province to that putting down regional revolts and stabs at independence, sometimes ruthlessly (by massacring entire villages).

[BigCur]

Of course not,the USA would have just initiated however many incidents it took to sieze what it wanted.

[Coldjensens]

Wait. I thought that the southwest IS Mexican. Have you been there lately?