When the novel is finished, this will be the first page. The historical bent should be pretty apparent. I thought it was pretty neat to find out that Mexico not only used to be an empire, but that that empire was huge. It continues after the cut.
In the year 1810 a massive seismic shift drove the entirety of both Upper (called Alta) and Lower (called Baja) California into the Pacific Ocean. This entire land mass shifted further out to sea leaving a massive coastal shelf along the new ocean front properties in the west. As a result, the few areas of the Californias still above water, transformed from ranchos and missions into stony or desert islands, were those which had been coastal already.
The few people who survived the initial calamity, now on scattered islands, died of dehydration. A handful were lucky enough to find materials and made rafts but none reached the shores alive.
Things weren’t much better on the mainland. The earthquake was felt all the way to the Mississippi and cities near the new coast line were devastated. Settlements like Yuma and Mazatlán were completely destroyed. Further east, cities like El Paso and Mexico City suffered severe damage. Adobe buildings collapsed. Mines caved in. No one ever counted how many people died. It took decades for the region to rebuild. Much was simply abandoned.
The quake was the proximal cause for Spain to abandon her holdings in the New World. The locals had been getting restless and the Crown had planned to smother the infant insurrection in its crib, but the costs of rebuilding and repairing the shattered colony were added to the costs of a war to suppress the revolt and the bottom line was deemed too costly. And thus Mexico received her independence. It took years before the metaphorical dust settled enough for the government to be able to govern.
In 1813 six men chartered two armored stage coaches from somewhere in the United States and traveled all the way to Mexico City. One coach carried the six men, the other carried gold bars. Some say that Cornelius Vanderbilt himself was one of the men. Others insist that he sent them. In truth no one knows who the men were or where they came from. They met privately with the Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. Only two things can be said with certainty about the meeting: The men were granted the island which had once been the Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles; and three years later when the Emperor was dead no trace or account of the money could be found.
Throughout the 1820s a city was built on that desert island. The city was made open to immigrants from all lands and quickly people arrived from as near as Mexico and as far as China and New York, drawn by the construction jobs. The city featured a large University and drew from the best alchemists, builders and philosophers in the world. By the ‘30s the city had changed from a punch-line to a destination. By the 1860s it was to be a world power.
The shadowy founders, who are immortalized in no statues or plaques, Anglicized the name and proclaimed themselves subject to no man christening their land The Sovereign State of Angels.
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