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Why didn't Mexico join Germany in WW1 against the US? It would have opened up a front to attack the US.
I studied this period of Mexican history and I can give you the most accurate answer.
There are several equally important reasons (neighborly peace, etc.), but the BIGGEST reason that hardly anyone mentioned is this one: The Mexican Revolution.
WWI was staged from 1914–1918, the semi-official start to the bloody Mexican Revolution was in 1910-1915 (middle of WWI), and that was when various political, military and social factions, teamed up to overthrow the long reigning benign, but intractable dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, a conservative aristocrat who is often credited with both modernizing Mexico’s infrastructure and Europeanizing it in architecture, education, industry, as well as it's people (this was also a period of very active European migration to Mexico especially German, Austrian Czech, Spanish and other continental Europeans).
While Diaz’s reforms made Mexico more modern, and brought European flair to Mexico and it’s aristocrats, it also made it difficult or impossible for the vast majority of poor Mexicans to advance economically, and own land or get out of destitution and extreme poverty. Conditions were very similar to how the Russian Revolution began.
As this internal strife and turmoil of it’s leadership, government institutions, and outright civil war consumed the nation’s psyche and efforts, Mexico was really in no position to take on any additional worries or commitments. Therefore when Germany came along and made it’s offer, I have no doubt they considered it for a minute, but in the end, they most likely knew A)the U.S. is more useful as an ally over a foreign largely unknown nation, and B)as Mexico’s leadership and democratic institutions were in flux they were in no position to make lasting commitments, and C) no ability to wage multiple wars on domestic and international levels, when there was a bloody internal civil war going on with multiple battle fronts, up and down the country, decimating entire cities and killing a large number of it’s citizens.
The Mexican Revolution was not a one time battle or a few battles, but a long protracted fight among competing factions and political forms of government and ideas (from democracy, to communism, to socialism, to etc.) from roughly 1910–1930s(yes it engulfed Mexico through one world war, the Great Depression, and Pancho Villa, etc.).
The Revolution was bloody and exhausting for all parties, and finally towards the beginning of the 1930’s the country entered a peace (perhaps what can be referred to as a Pax Mexicana), that saw it restore its democracy, found new government institutions, and develop existing industries, and create new ones (like media companies that had it’s Golden Age in the 1950s, and are among the biggest in the world today). It expanded the primary education system beyond Mexico city into the rest of the country and in the cities expanded secondary education beyond only the wealthy. Land was distributed to many people in a type of communal ownership arrangement. Things improved slowly, in the end leaving Mexico in a better place than prior to 1915.
That’s not to say that endemic poverty still wasn’t an issue, but it helped make Mexico more modern in a sense that more of the population was getting basic education, preparing it for more complex industry and the future. There’s a reason why the country is part of the G20 today, and a lot of it has to do with the foundations set up right before and right after the Mexican Revolution.
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