DBWI: Stability in California?

Swan Station

I've been thinking about this week's assassination of President Juan Luis de Salvatierra III destroying the peace talks in Yerba Buena. What do you think could have happened differently to make California more politically stable?

And by California, I mean the entire region of old Alta California -- from the Great Divide and the Colorado River to the Pacific, not just the de facto borders of the Pueblos Unidos de California in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.

Any chance the area could have remained part of Mexico, or otherwise been united into one country? Or, at the very least, what could have led to more amicable relations between the major powers in the region?
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
Tough one.

The roots of the current conflict go back to the Californian Civil War in the 1930s. General Sandoval Gutierrez staged a coup after the Communist uprisings in San Diego and Monterrey and the workers council militia occupying the Monterrey Presidio and seizing the weapons there. Gutierrez was never able to gain complete control of the country, basically occupying Yerba Buena and inland and north to the border of British Oregon while fighting a bitter war with the Communist, Social Democrat and Anarchist groups occupying towns south. The war saw the testing of modern weapons like twin engine bombers, tanks and modern artillery tactics as the Japanese and British funded and sent arms to General Guitierrez, the United States supported the Social Democrats and Marxist groups and governments aided the communists and anarchists.

President Long sent US Marines to occupy Santa Barbara at one point and later sponsored a cease fire agreement between General Guitierrez and the San Diego commune and a tenuous power sharing agreement and elections were held.

California has always been extremely stratified. The social class system is basically the Californio rancher family aristrocracy, the Mestizo and Ango-American middle class, the natives, Chinese and other immigrant groups at the bottom. Not alot of social mobility. This leads to frequent unrest.

Some kind of social or land reform to alleviate poverty and disenfranchisement would help more than another junta or revolutionary movement.
 

Strategos' Risk

California is such a peculiar post-Spanish state. Mexico has been doing quite well for a neo-Imperialist (or shall we call it post-Monarchist?) country, and most of Latin America has been doing quite well as republics with varying degrees of democracy. Only in Central America do we see stratified, internally-divided societies. I wonder why is that.
 

jycee

I think part of it has to do with where California is located: it is in the way of two major powers. For the US it was its only opportunity to reach the Pacific and for Mexico it was the only way of keeping its anglo-rival from reaching the Pacific.

Although Mexico emerged stable after it independence and after the 1917 revolution which abolished the monarchy and established the republic, California was the only region that splintered (besides the Central American republics early on). I think this can be traced back to the idea of Manifest Destiny in the US; this old idea was the believe that the US was destined to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is partially responsible for the failed attempt to snatch Tejas from Mexico in the 1830s and for the heated dispute over what is now the British Kingdom of Cascadia in the 1840s.

Had the US not invaded California in 1852 and Fremont had not established his "Bear Flag Republic" as some attempt to legitimize the invasion maybe California could have remained part of Mexico and hence stable. It was the the coinciding of its "independence" and the discovery of gold that led to several hacendados and gobernitos to try to take power for themselves ad mist the chaos.

Maybe if the US reaches a different agreement over the North Pacific Territory with Britain that gives the US access to the Pacific, there would be no California incursion. So when gold is discovered California is still part of Mexico and the Imperial government would have been in charge of the repartition of land post gold-rush.

Another option would be for the US to invade/annex part or the whole of California prior to the gold rush. And thus it is the US government which controls the rush. Though this options seems rather ASBish.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
The early conflicts between Fremont and the Californio hacendados and gobernitos lasted about a decade before they were either bought out or given enough power and offices that they cooperated with Monterrey.

Most presidents or caudillos in California since then have been of the descent of those powerful rancher families, Salvatierra and Gutierrez both being examples.
 

Strategos' Risk

It's a shame that Bolivarism never caught on north of the Isthmus of Panama. Mexico aside, there's not a single nation that couldn't have benefited from its unity and pragmatism, California especially. When Chile almost went to war with Bolivia in the 19th century, it was Bolivarism that led their neighbors to diplomatically mediate and avert bloodshed. When Paraguay acted up later on, it was Bolivarism that led Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to unite and successfully defeat the rogue state. When the U.S. sought allies against international Marxism, it was Bolivarism that led the nascent Council of Latin America to enter the Pan-Atlantic Alliance, and receive all of the aid provided by the Tugwell Plan.

If only California had Bolivarism.
 

Swan Station

What about the eastern parts of the region?

One thing I always wondered, is why some of the other nations around it continue to tolerate all of these problems just across their borders. I mean, sure the United States is separated from it by a huge mountain range, while Santa Fe is separated from it by one of the largest and deepest canyon systems in the world across much of the length of its border, but there is still a relatively steady stream of refugees and immigrants who seem to make it across both of those lines. And, of course, the straight Cascadia border is like a Medicine Line for the Shoshone and Paiute.

Along another line of thought: any chance that the old Republic of Great Salina could have established a large sphere of influence earlier on, to at least unite all of the disparate "city-states" in the Great Basin? Or, would all of those little religious and mining colonies scattered throughout the area still have been a problem and brought it down anyway?
 
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DISSIDENT

Banned
The United States ignores it for the same reason they ignore problems in Mexico. The refugees and illegal immigrants provide cheap labor and there is no consensus on how to approach the situation by the government.

Cascadia ignores it because they have an extremely small military and the current Labor government sitting in Parliament in Astoria is busy dealing with carving out a new province for the Tillamook, Umatilla and other First Nation tribes in the Oregon and Tacoma provinces. The governor general has no real say in the matter. So, they just ignore it.

Most of the small mining towns inland or in the northern provinces are small, rural, and mostly populated by Anglo-Americans trying to make a living. The government in Yerba Buena tends to ignore them. I don't think they want to really be a part of California but they would probably not want to be annexed to the US or become British subjects in Cascadia either. Yreka, Marysville, Redding, Eureka, Weaverville tend to just ignore Yerba Buena and run things their own way.
 
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