Party-Driven State Formation in Mexico

Abstract

This chapter looks at the synthesis of nineteenth-century Latin American history that describes Mexico as a failed state, considering the country as the prime Latin American example of Murphy's Law. It details how Mexico had lost more than half of the territory under its nominal control since the time of its independence in 1821 by the mid-nineteenth-century. It also explains that Mexico's territorial loss was the result of the combination of U.S. expansionism and the country's military weakness that was brought upon by deeper fiscal causes. The chapter discusses how Mexico successfully avoided territorial fragmentation suffered by the much smaller Central American state from the south, which subdivided the isthmus into five minirepublics. It addresses why and how Mexico managed to preserve a territory of colossal proportions that radically cover different economic and political regions.