Why was Mexico's revolution less successful than the American one?

Great Debates
1

Reading the thread on why the US never had a Reign of Terror had me thinking about the museums I visited in Mexico - I hope this is the right forum, but feel free to move to IMHO if necessary.

A few months ago I was in Mexico with my cousin in the Peace Corps, which was great since she could translate all the exhibits in the museums. I hadn’t really studied much Mexican history in school except where it intersected US history (the Alamo, the Zimmerman Telegram, that sort of thing) and was fascinated in the fact that Mexico had a surprisingly similar historical pattern to us, just a bit later.

Specifically, the United States was a colony of a European power that gained independence (Revolutionary War), struggled with the nature of the new government (Articles of Confederation, Constitutional Convention, Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists), had a dust-up with a neighbor a few decades later (War of 1812, okay, so that had Britain in it as well as Canada), then had a nasty, nasty civil war (Civil War) and spent a long time dealing with the aftermath.

Mexico was a colony of a European power that gained independence (War of Independence), struggled with the nature of the new government (United Mexican States), had a dust-up with a neighbor a few decades later (Mexican-American War, and perhaps we can draw a parallel with the whole Maximillian thing a bit later and the British part of the War of 1812?), then had a nasty, nasty civil war (Revolution) and spent a long time dealing with the aftermath.

So, if Mexico and the US have somewhat similar ingredients (and I don’t want to overemphasize superficial parallels, of course) why isn’t the result more similar? I mean, Mexico was a lot nicer than I expected, but it clearly isn’t as fortunate as the US in terms of wealth, government, or other measures.

Spain as a colonizer rather than Britain?

Just the resulting dominance of Catholicism rather than Protestantism?

The fact that Mexico’s Founding Fathers mostly did not survive their war for independence and weren’t around to be the first few leaders of the new government?

2

Spain insisted on governing its colonies. The Crown would not even allow “creoles” – persons of pure Spanish blood, but born in the New World – to participate in their government, that was limited to Spain-born gapuchines (big-spur-wearers); of course when the creoles took over they had little to no governmental experience. The Americans improvised/learned do-it-yourself government during decades of “benign neglect” by the English/British Crown.

3

The most Catholic countries in Europe are Ireland and Poland, and they both managed to become perfectly good democracies once their neighbors finally let them get on with it.

4

Not much time here, but one big reason was that “The Mexican Empire” was the first official name of independent Mexico, there was no intention from the beginning to listen to the people and the the “Plan de Iguala”, the document that was used as the basis of the new government, did talk about equality…under a constitutional monarchy, not a good plan to begin with… the plan in essence turned to be one of of conquest as they had to “keep” all other places like Central America under the control of the new Mexican empire.

5

N.B.: Mexico did not win its independence until after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Europe was in monarchist-traditionalist-reactionary-crackdown mode, and even in the Spanish New World, “democracy” or “republic” must have had rather a disreputable sound at the time. Agustin de Iturbide was reluctant to accept the crown as Emperor of Mexico – not because he was a democrat, but because he was a divine-right monarchist who believed God had given the world’s rule to certain royal families, and Iturbide’s family was not one of them.

6

A large contributing factor was the economic conditions. Mexico was a peasant society with a small affluent land-owning elite, with a majority very poor peasant population.

That is inherently less stable situation that is far harder to mold into working democracy, than one in which wealth is more evenly distributed.

7

Italy might disagree with that notion.

8

You’ve got to be kidding. Iturbide most definitely wanted to rule Mexico. Hell, he appointed himself emperor.

9

From all I’ve heard, Italy would be wrong.

10

Well, he was power-hungry too; he was conflicted. Perhaps after his fall, he took it as divine judgment.

Later, Napoleon III tried giving Mexico a proper Emperor of impeccably royal blood – Archduke Maximilian, a Hapsburg, a family which had once ruled Spain itself – but that didn’t work out either. But, this wasn’t just Napoleon’s idea, there was some actual demand in Mexico, at least among some of the elites, for a monarchical solution.

11

When you look up “understatement” in the dictionary, you find that. :slight_smile:

12

I would say in general cultural factors. The English speaking colonies had a tradition of liberty and representative government along with the colonies being dominated by small farmers and merchants while on the other hand Spain was an absolute monarchy and economically far more backward.

13

Because the United States had up to four million slaves for nearly a hundred years after the Revolutionary War.

14

And Mexico had its brute-labor mudsill in the Indian-Mestizo peasantry, only slightly better off than slaves, and the majority of the population.

15

What is it with Mexicans and Austrians?!

16

It is a matter of historic record that Indians made very poor slaves. Even if the numbers were comparable, productivity was not.

17

They like killing or fighting guys named Napoleon?

18

Again the majority of the population were not free in any real sense-they were peons or whatnot.

19

Irrelevant. Mexico did not prosper after their revolution because they did not have the same productivity from their peons that we have from our slaves.

20

But the US did not ONLY have slaves (and after slavery ended, had sharecroppers, child-laborers and poor immigrants who owed their soul to the company store, not that much better off than the peones ()) It also had homegrown traders, industrialists, financiers,* capitalists, that helped use the abundant resources to sustain an expanding economy. These were classes that were not fostered in the Spanish Empire, heck, not even in Spain itself, until too late in the game.
The Spanish too often set up straight-extraction colonies w/o a value-added segment to the economy. Just dig up ores, preferrably gold or silver, or harvest sugar or whatever, and ship 'em out (exclusively through whoever the crown choses, natch). She then ruled them with no pretense of responsible government, often through permanent military rule, and held on to a closed-oligarchical sociopolitical system and a socioeconomic environment that at its best was crudely mercantilist, and quite often quasi-feudal. You were “grande” if you owned a lot of land and/or had a lot of people who depended on or owed you for your patronage.
Meanwhile the US, through its closer association with Britain and freer contact with Enlightenment Europe, was already at the starting line better able to take the next steps into capitalism, which makes for a more productive economy. The trader and shopkeeper were important people who could eventually rise to join the overclass; there was an incipient capitalist class who would use the natural resources not just to sell outright for hard currency but to create homegrown industries making things to add value to the production chain; plus there was the tradition of free farmers which coupled to an expanding frontier that allowed people to move on and have their own land (to the great detriment, of course, of the Native population), so not as large a segment of the population was “bound to the soil”.
Also, a tradition of some degree of representative civil government (for the free white population anyway) and respect for the common law meant that after independence there was a greater bench depth of leadership and willingness to abide by rule of law and maintain order and try to get ahead playing by the book. Meanwhile in a lot of the Spanish Empire “the law” simply meant whatever someone at the Viceroy’s palace said it was, and usually was just something else meant to slap you down and keep you in your place but you could get around it if you knew (or were) the right people. Not friendly to social development. The post-independence governments, alas, tended to maintain those trends.

(* Maybe, on the not-so-nice side of things, it could also be that the slave in the plantation, or the industrial child-worker, were not viewed in the US as patronage subjects who you may one day want to be your regiment in *your *attempted takeover, but as outright tools of production whose output was to be maximized.)