1843 had been a cold year for us in Mexico. The weather had been especially volatile in the later months. This seemed to be a warning of what was to come. A storm was brewing. It was not the usual storm that came off of the wild Atlantic winds to the East, but one that was brewing in the North. No one knew the turmoil that was to come – turmoil that would rock every Western nation to its core with almost no warning. But for now, we still had our worries. Texas’s fate hung in the balance between us, America, and independence. Separatists throughout the nation were digging in and lashing out. Conflicts were rising with nations all around us – America and the issue of Texas to our northeast, the recent Balkanization and subsequent instability of the former states of the Federal Republic of Central America to our south, conflicts in the Caribbean with the colonial powers, warlords seizing personal control of Mexican provinces, and almost every part of Mexico calling for their own free state. The old Mexico was falling apart; everyone knew it; everyone was capitalizing on it. The next few years had quite a bit in store for us, and nobody could predict how it would play out it…
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