I've been considering making material for an alternate history scenario in which Vicente Guerrero is not overthrown and serves out his term. Later on, in the 1830s, there is a major civil war between the federal government controlled by the Yorkinos and secessionist states led by Escoceces. The Escoceces put up a strong resistance, but the Centralists cause a lot of infighting in the conservative states and the Yorkinos win a decisive victory.
This renders the Escoceces marginalized for the time being and paves the way for the liberals to make decisive and permanent reforms, effectively completing the Reform War a generation and a half early. With total control under someone like Ocampo or Farías, the liberals invest in national schools independent from the church and attract foreign capital to help pay debts and develop the country.
They form a new officer corps loyal to the liberals and without the fueros. They build foreign alliances, perhaps with Britain or France or the Netherlands. They use tax money levied against hacendado land owners to pay the army and buy updated artillery. The first railroad is built across the strait of Tehuatepec and then another between the south and Alta California, connecting the south to the northern territories.
Texas stays part of the country and its citizens are pacified by being formed into a local auxiliary unit to fight against Indians and protect colonies in the north, while they are happy with the continuation of the 1824 constitution without Santa Anna in the picture (who died in the civil war). The US is temporarily prevented from engaging in expansionism, probably by a Clay presidency.
In the early 1850s, however, California, populated mostly by foreign miners following the Helvetica Ranch gold rush, colonists fleeing taxation in the south, and soldiers offered land grants after the civil war, attempts to secede and form its own republic. The United States sees an opportunity and annexes Alta California.
A border dispute results in war, and the US attempts to invade the country via California and Texas while blockading the country along its coasts. The invasion through the Rockies is bogged down by the distance and the mountains and deserts, facing defeats and attrition in New Mexico, and fails to take Yerba Buena or Los Angeles while barely establishing a presence in the central valley up against the mountains. In the south, they try to invade Texas, but the locals fight alongside the Mexican government. There are rampant desertions from the US Army among Irish and German Catholics.
The Texas invasion is fought to a standstill along the Brazos, with trenches dug in places, and competant Mexican generals who gained experience in the civil war and the colonial Indian wars in the north lead the army to several victories. The army slowly falls back, inflicting attrition, while another American invasion attempts to march inland from Veracruz alongside exiled Escoceces. They are decisively defeated at the fortress of Puebla by a Mexican military composed of enthusiastic free former peasants educated in secular schools and loyal to the federal government, along with catholic deserters from the US and escaped slaves. The US Army retreats back to the coast.
Meanwhile, there are draft riots in US cities and violence between north and south and Catholics and Protestants back east. Britain threatens to join on Mexico's side, either forcing the US to back down and sue for peace or intervening to defeat their navy at sea and aid Mexico on land, possibly also seizing parts of the plains and Oregon country.
Mexico is able to retain all its prewar land, while more soldiers are given land grants in the north, serving to populate the region with southern colonists and pacify the local Indians. Nuevo Mexico, Texas, and Alta California west of the mountains become states soon after the war, while later on the interior achieves statehood as well due to the increase in transcontinental traffic. Mexico becomes a great power and hegemon of North America, while the US falls apart as the south secedes soon after the war.
By altering a single structural domino in 1829, keeping Vicente Guerrero in power and maintaining the 1824 Constitution, the scenario eliminates the systemic political paralysis that crippled real-world 19th-century Mexico.
Domestic socio-economic changes directly explain the military outcomes:
Early La Reforma (1830s vs. 1850s): In our history, Mexico’s Liberals and Conservatives fought a devastating, decades-long tug-of-war that drained the treasury and fractured national identity. By crushing the Escoceses early and removing Santa Anna, the Yorkinos achieve what Valentín Gómez Farías tried to do in 1833, but with actual state power to enforce it.
A Citizen-Army with Modern Logistics: Abolishing the military fueros (special privileges) and replacing the old, corrupt praetorian guard with an officer corps trained in secular national schools solves Mexico’s biggest historical military issue: morale and leadership. The Mexican infantry of the 1840s were often ill-equipped, barefoot conscripts led by self-serving generals. Here, we see a motivated, literate citizen-soldier class fighting for a republic that actually granted them land and education.
Funding through Land Taxes: Taxing the massive, under-utilized haciendas to buy modern artillery and pay regular wages turns the Mexican Army into a disciplined, professional force that can actually conduct defensive attrition warfare rather than dissolving due to lack of pay.
The Tehuantepec & Transcontinental Railroads: Building rail lines to Alta California by the late 1840s completely changes the geography of the war. Historically, Alta California and Nuevo México were functionally isolated islands separated by thousands of miles of arid wilderness. A rail connection allows central Mexico to project power, move artillery, and pump southern settlers directly into the Pacific coast.
Integrating Texas: Keeping Texas loyal by institutionalizing Texan militias into an official frontier protection force (militia auxiliary) addresses their primary real-world grievance (protection against Comanche and Apache raids) while avoiding the centralized tyranny of Santa Anna's 1835 Seven Laws that triggered the Texas Revolution.
The California Crisis & Mountain Attrition: If California is populated by a mix of foreign fortune-seekers and Mexican veteran-colonists, an American invasion across the Great Basin and the Rockies becomes a logistical nightmare. Historically, Stephen W. Kearny's march to California succeeded because Mexican forces in California were tiny and unsupported. Against fortified coastal garrisons supported by rail supply lines and mountain garrisons in New Mexico, the US Army gets trapped in desert attrition.
The Defensive Strategy (The Brazos & Puebla): Falling back along the Brazos River to force the US into trench warfare plays directly into Mexico's defensive advantages. Furthermore, the disaster at Puebla mirrors the historical 1862 battle, but against Winfield Scott–style invaders. A national army fighting on home soil with modern artillery and popular support turns Puebla into a meat grinder for the US expeditionary force.
US Internal Collapse & European Diplomacy: The San Patricio Battalion (Irish/German deserters) was a real historical phenomenon; in a war that is clearly an aggressive, bloody failure, Catholic desertion and Northern anti-war draft riots would escalate dramatically. A Clay-style Whig legacy followed by an aggressive, failed northern expansion would trigger the US sectional crisis early. Combined with British naval intervention to protect their investments in Mexican transit routes, the US is forced into an humiliating status quo ante bellum.
By winning the war, maintaining its territorial integrity, and populating the north with loyal veteran-homesteaders, Mexico solves its demographic vacuum. The mid-19th-century transcontinental trade flowing through Tehuantepec and Alta California makes Mexico City the financial and industrial hub of the Americas, while a fractured, post-secession United States loses its trajectory toward global hegemony.
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