Mexico

>>1876935

>Why didn't Mexico become a first world power?

The Mexican-American war. The US took the entire western part of the continent, leaving Mexico with no more room for growth.

>>1876935
If they had gone fascist they would have been a world power.

Politically speaking, Mexico was a comlpete shitshow from its independence until after the civil war about 100 years later. Half the elites wanted to turn Mexico into a liberal republic with values inspired by the French and American revolutions, the other half wanted a conservative monarchy. They simply didn't have the unity the would have needed to stand up to the US.

>>1876953
Why couldn't they have expanded to the south?

>>1876935
Mexico despite republican pretensions, was essentially a feudal state. the large property owners, largely of European decent were nobility in all but title. They had little interest in anything besides holding on to there power against internal and external threats, and were incapable of engaging in the reforms such a project would entail.

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>>1876985

>Why couldn't they have expanded to the south?

>>1876985
they were expanded enough

>>1877026
As someone who's lived in Arizona, the American Southwest is not a place you look at and say 'Yeah, let's settle in that direction.'

>>1877262
"they" as in mexico you dingus

>>1876953
>>1877026
It's not like the SW's mineral wealth was known in the 1840s and earlier, Gold Rush notwithstanding. Also the Panish/Mexican population in the region was negligible at best and was actually at its lowest point in over 100 years by the time the Mexican-American war started, due to frequent Apache and Comanche raids on Mexican settlements. Why do you think Mexico was so willing to let gringos in at the time?

Mexico itself was actually not that upset with America's control of the region since it meant that they would be able to reduce the violence inflicted on Mexico by Indians in the region.

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>>1877262
At least we have copper and cattle.

>>1876953
>200 years to settle the west
>Americans did it in 60

>>1876985
they had plenty of space. the vast majority of their population lived in the small central region of the country. it took them the entire 19th century to colonize their the vast expanse of their northern states. some parts of the northern sierra madre area were still basically the Wild West until the 1920s

the reason america took everything from texas to cali is because mexico had to settle an entire frontier of its own before it could even get to those regions, whereas american settlers were already there.

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>>1876935
A lot of reasons.

First, they got independence from Spain but unlike the United States, which inherited relatively effective govt institutions and a pretty cohesive identity, mexico got shitty mercantilism and weak authoritarianism.

Maybe more important, there was a ton of class inequality, with the upper classes (distinguished by race, being more white, making things even harder to change) committed to maintaining a system that was corrupt and ineffective long term but short term benefited them. Add to that shit infrastructure and no real national identity to speak of (vital in a republic unless you want to resort to clientelism and fake democracy, as mexico has) and you have a recipe for a real shitshow.

Basically the same story for all of South America except costa rica which managed to overcome these problems partially due to being so shitty from the beginning that it didn't have entrenched classes and poor institutions.