The Fallen Continent: Texas (Part 1)
The old adage still proves true that everything is bigger in Texas. First among them is the biggest faction of all: the United States of Aztlan.
Population: 2,150,000
Largest City: Laredo
She's the sweetest little rosebud
That Texas ever knew;
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,
They sparkle like the dew.
You may talk about your dearest Mae
Or sing of Rosalee—
But the Yellow Rose of Texas
Is the only girl for me!
Introduction
Texas remains the second-most populous state in the country and is home to its most powerful faction, the United States of Aztlan. So large, in fact, is this faction, that this exceedingly long article will be broken up into two parts. This first part consists of the introductory history of Texas, with its two now-defunct federal governments, and a detailed overview of the complex, almost byzantine Aztlan faction. The second part, which will come out tomorrow, concerns the rest of Texas and all its other factions.
Amarillo & Midland
Thanks to its larger rural population than California, Texas fared slightly better than the Golden State, beating it out in population by about a quarter million people. The northeast and center of the state were badly battered, as was most of the state’s coastline, but the south and west remained mostly unscathed.
Surviving state and federal authorities gathered in Amarillo to establish a new government. Local governments also remained in the south and in east Texas and coordinated with Amarillo in a herculean effort to manage the rapidly-unfolding disaster. To this end, Twin Falls designated Amarillo as one of the country’s primary Reconstruction and Recovery Centers.
After the destruction of Twin Falls, Amarillo became the largest remaining center of federal authority in the country and the natural site of the second postwar government. An obscure provision of the law allows the House of Representatives to reduce the size of the voting quorum in case of catastrophic circumstances. Invoking this statute, the rump House in Amarillo established a provisional number of fifty-one representatives. Even this pitifully small House was mostly filled by postwar appointees, many of whom came from both houses of the Texas Legislature. One such appointee, Oscar Zinn, was elected Speaker of the House by his fellow delegates and was sworn in as the second Acting President of the United States since the death of President Clinton.
Zinn was a newcomer to the political sphere, but was considered a rising political star within the Texas Senate before the Great War. He was previously on track to become the Texas Senate floor leader and was a natural pick for US Senator by the state’s Acting Governor. As a political moderate who distinguished himself during the initial panic following the nuclear exchange, he was a natural pick for Acting President following the fall of Twin Falls. Much like Pope Pius XIII in São Paulo, he was a compromise candidate that nobody loved, yet nobody objected to; continuity and immediate action were more important than political ideals or grandiose plans for the future.
The Zinn Presidency was perhaps the most successful of the postwar governments. It achieved near-universal recognition, slowed the spread of chaos and anarchy that was gripping the nation, and fought a valiant, yet doomed battle against hunger during the nuclear winter. Things weren’t necessarily looking good—their grip on the country was slipping every single day—but Zinn’s administration quenched the wildfire and transformed it into a controlled burn. Once the nuclear winter and the secondary strikes were over, west Texas and the other pockets of government authority would be in a strong position to reclaim the rest of the country and finally begin to recover from the Third World War.
Thirteen months after the Great War began, the city of Amarillo and the federal and state governments located there were annihilated by a secondary strike.
In truth, Oscar Zinn’s days were numbered, even without the renewed nuclear attack on the part of the Russians. Overwhelmed with responsibility, the Acting President was already working himself into an early grave. The survivors of Amarillo relocated to Dodge City, Kansas, the seat of a strong state government and a natural rallying point for federal remnants. There they established yet another rump government, this one even smaller than the last, and with even less of a veneer of democratic legitimacy. Its Acting President was US Representative John Ingersoll, another postwar appointee from the antebellum Texas Legislature, pressed into service during the Twin Falls days.
Unfortunately for Ingersoll, it was the worst time in American history to be President. It was now the coldest September in American history, and the nuclear winter was reaching its nadir. The coming months would be ones of bitter cold and aching hunger pains, and the following years were to be remembered as the Starving Time across the continent. Not only was Dodge City plagued with refugees, but the rest of the country was falling apart. The Northwestern white separatists launched a renewed offensive. The Purified Mormons in Utah rose up in revolt. Louisiana had fallen to socialist revolutionaries. California, New York, and Florida had descended into warlord free-for-alls, and the northern Great Plains were a no man’s land. Local governments throughout the country refused to comply with Ingersoll’s demands and instead chose to hoard what few resources remained for themselves. Faced with an impossible situation, Ingersoll simply chose to abandon his untenable position in Dodge City. He packed up what he could, left a token force behind as a sacrificial lamb for the rabble to devour, and flew back to Texas.
Reestablishing himself in Midland, Ingersoll hoped that at least his own pocket of Texas could return to the relative stability of the Amarillo period. Kansas, unfortunately, would not let that happen. Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture David Brannigan, whom Ingersoll had left behind as bait for the mob, had instead brought the rabble under his control. Outfitted as “Brannigan’s Guard,” Dodge City’s army of enraged refugees came south to plunder Midland and affirm David Brannigan’s claim as President of the United States. The Dodge City-Midland Wars had begun.
Midland should have, by all accounts, won the civil war. Brannigan’s Guard was quickly swept away by starvation and disease, while Ingersoll’s state and federal troops were well-fed, well-equipped, professionally-trained, and held the defensive advantage. They were not, however, well led.
Ingersoll was an understandably desirable candidate to succeed Zinn due to his attractive leadership qualities: he was direct, decisive, and assertive. He was more polarizing than Zinn, but there were few candidates available for the job by September 2030, and he was quick enough to act that no one initially challenged his bid. Unlike Zinn, he actively sought out the office, unilaterally proclaiming himself President and only undergoing the legal fiction to justify it days later. After the Dodge City riots and the subsequent invasion, something snapped in Ingersoll’s brain, transforming him from a capable (albeit corrupt) politician into a complete sociopath.
The Acting President brought the hammer down hard on civil unrest, transforming his regime into a dictatorship that surpassed even the most austere emergency governments in its violent excess. To make matters worse, the perceived betrayal of the Dodge City government brought out the worst of his paranoia. Ingersoll became incapable of admitting mistakes or delegating tasks beyond his personal ability to subordinates. Convinced that every failing of his government was the fault of treacherous plotters, he enacted a great purge that scourged the Midland Government of its most competent members.
No branch of government or level of leadership was left unscathed. The cabinet, the Supreme Court, Congress, the armed forces, FEMA, the State of Texas, its city and county governments, even the private sector (which was almost entirely subsumed into the federal government under Ingersoll’s personal supervision) were scarred by the Great Purge and left bereft of capable officials. Only the Acadian National Revolution can compare in its scope and devastation. Yet while the Acadian National Revolution was a targeted, deliberate campaign to cull Louisiana’s population and redirect the masses’ fears and hatred away from Acadian leadership, Ingersoll’s Great Purge was conducted out of blind paranoia and harmed the Midland government itself more than anything else.
The Great Purge ultimately stripped the Midland government of virtually all of its remaining legitimacy. Countless state and local governments throughout the country abandoned their pledges of loyalty to Midland and either looked to other sources of leadership or renounced federal allegiance altogether. The only factions that continued to profess their loyalty were either so far away that Ingersoll couldn’t hurt them, or were already purged of their original leadership and were replaced by incompetent Ingersoll loyalists and opportunistic warlords who pretended to be Ingersoll loyalists (a dangerous gambit, considering how quickly the President changed his mind). Thanks to the Great Purge, any further attempts to reunify the United States were marred by confusion, isolation, and mutual opposition. The country was shattered into anarchy, from which it has not yet recovered. Time will tell if it ever shall.
After decades of brutal warfare and agonizing decline, the United States government in Midland met its fate. John Ingersoll passed away from natural causes (possibly a stress-induced heart attack), a fate he rarely allowed his subordinates to meet. Without a clear plan of succession, his neutered Congress (which by now contained only two senators and three representatives) stalled. The head of Midland’s secret police, Luther Pike, stepped in and forced Congress to appoint him President in a snap election. Pike staged a last, desperate counteroffensive, meant less to win the war and more to put himself in a good bargaining position for the negotiating table. Pike’s offensive was surprisingly successful, probably because he ordered his troops to stop and dig in before they could lose all momentum and collapse. After salvaging what he could of the front lines, Pike conditionally surrendered to the United States of America in Dodge City and forfeited Midland’s claim to the United States. As the new State of Texas, Midland swore nominal fealty to Dodge City, but did not join the Dodge City Convention, as the Convention already contained a Texan government in Perryton.
Dodge City was unhappy with the resulting peace and the “Texas Question” that arose from it, but lacked the strength to destroy Midland in an all-out siege. They instead chose to postpone the issue as they focused their efforts on other fronts: New Mexico, Colorado, and central Kansas. As they left Texas behind, a new power emerged in the south to sweep up the remains: the United States of Aztlan.
Throughout the Dodge City-Midland War, the rest of Texas was left to fend for itself and fell under a period of anarchy and warlordism. Hundreds of warlord bands once fought over Texan soil, but they have since been whittled down to only twenty contenders. These last few warlords, however, are no pushovers. They are the last men standing among millions who fought and died for supremacy, their fighters picked out of the ranks of hundreds of ephemeral armies. The new Aztlan realm, the most powerful in America, lumbers forward, but it will be no cakewalk challenging the warlords of central Texas.
Estados Unidos de Aztlán
United States of Aztlan
Capital: Laredo
Classification: Special Case (Confederal Caudillo dictatorship)
Buenaventura Xavier Hidalgo is the most powerful man in America. As President of the United States of Aztlan, or Estados Unidos de Aztlán, he commands the second-largest faction on the continent, only rivalled by Mexico itself. Aztlan is a humongous and sprawling state, containing five Mexican states and six American states (five of which were carved out of the remains of Texas). To call Aztlan a neo-feudal state is to do it an injustice. It does not neatly fit into any one ideological or political category, but is rather a patchwork of different systems that are being slowly drawn together into one colossal realm. To reflect the diverse and complicated histories of Aztlan’s constituent states, it is better to approach them individually, rather than confining them to one long winded entry.
In short, however, there are five main pillars of Aztlan rule:
The core Aztlan states, their army of regular Federales, and the Aztlan political party structure with President Hidalgo at the top.
The Bandido Nation, descended from prewar outlaw motorcycle gangs. Its numerous local Bandido clubs, mostly concentrated in southwest Texas, provide irregular troops to the Aztlan army. They additionally function as a paramilitary force and intelligence service.
The vestigial remnants of the Midland Government, which bring great economic and industrial wealth to the federation. They also supply the army with elite Anglo-American auxiliaries: the Midland Troopers and the fearsome Special Emergency Police.
The rancho system that dominates the northern and western frontiers, in which rancho lords rule over their own holdings as quasi-independent barons. Their private armies and plantations are filled with prisoners and indentured servants, most of whom are retornados: Mexican-Americans and their descendants who have returned to the United States after evacuating the country during the Starving Time.
The state-sponsored Santa Muerte cult which serves as the spiritual backbone of the regime.
Estado de Río Bravo
State of Rio Bravo
Capital: Laredo
Classification: Special Case (Aztlan core territory)
Allegiance: United States of Aztlan
Southern Texas was initially a strong bastion of government authority in the first days following the Great War. Although Brownsville and Corpus Christi were struck, few other cities in the region were targeted. The southerly climate also helped reduce the effects of the nuclear winter. With a large surviving population and better infrastructure, the local authorities stood a better chance of survival than those trapped in the “Thunderdome” situated between Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Consequently, the twin cities of Mission and McAllen grew into some of the largest cities in the country.
Despite the advantageous position, southern Texas was badly destabilized by one of the largest refugee crises experienced across the country, when millions of people—mostly Mexican-Americans, but also many others—crossed the border into Mexico. The authorities across both sides of the Rio Grande were faced with more responsibilities than they could handle, and state power retracted to safe zones around the largest cities. The enduring authorities in south Texas banded together under the leadership of the Mayor of McAllen. This municipal alliance originally recognized the string of legitimate US and Texan governments until John Ingersoll showed his hand. Rather than wait for Ingersoll to launch a purge, McAllen formed a rival state government. The McAllen government recognized the USA in Walla Walla until its destruction and never declared their support for another successor afterward.
The McAllen state was always hard pressed to defend its frontiers and was plagued with political corruption even in the best of times. It received no support from the Mexican states across the border, who collapsed into anarchy under the pressure of refugee waves and cartel uprisings. The cartels, in fact, were more reliable partners than the Mexican government, as they were warlords who at least had some continuity with a prewar order.
Further upstream, the city of Laredo and its twin in Tamaulipas gave rise to an altogether different polity: the Republic of Aztlan. Aztlan was a left-wing Hispanic nationalist state, not too different from the Frente de la Raza in southern California. There were notable differences between the ideology of the two (discussed at length in the California article), but both shared a goal of some kind of state by and for Hispanics within the former United States of America. Unlike the Frente, which was a minor warlord band with few competitors in its home region once the dust of the immediate California Anarchy had settled, Aztlan had the McAllen state government to contend with as the primary benefactor of the Tejano people.
Enter: Buenaventura Xavier Hidalgo. Hidalgo was born in Pecos, Texas and was still a teenager when the Great War broke out. He had spent his youth before the war flip-flopping between radical ideologies and obscure religious positions; after the bombs fell, he fell in with the Bandido Nation, a powerful confederation of gangs and warlords that controlled most of southwestern Texas. After years of fighting for the Bandidos in a game of cat-and-mouse with the Ingersoll Regime, Hidalgo saw the writing on the wall for the Bandidos. They were a formidable force, but lacked the unity and central leadership necessary to conquer the wasteland and secure its continued existence. He saw the answer to his dilemma in the Republic of Aztlan and moved south to Laredo.
Hidalgo initially served Aztlan as a revolutionary operative in McAllen by organizing revolutionary cells, spreading propaganda, and raiding supply depots and granaries. Through armed robberies, racketeering, arms deals, drug deals, and targeted assassinations, Hidalgo and his crew kept the McAllen government on the defensive while Aztlan steadily expanded across southeast Texas. He rose through the ranks of the Aztlan Republic as a political commissar in the regular army, though he acted more like a gangster or terrorist leader than a political ideologue.
His early military career produced mixed results (unlike his more successful later years), but he had a sufficient propaganda machine to capitalize on any victories he scored. A prime example was the defeat and capture of McAllen itself: Hidalgo was hailed as the savior of the Aztlan army due to the timely arrival of his battalion at a crucial moment in the battle. In reality, the Aztlan forces had only gotten themselves in such a bind because Hidalgo intentionally held his troops back and ignored previous orders to attack, putting the rest of the army in jeopardy to further his political career.
Following the defeat and subjugation of the McAllen government, the president and founding father of Aztlan, Juan Zavala, fell ill and secluded himself within his home. Hidalgo leveraged his intelligence connections and military power into becoming the caudillo’s liaison with the outside world, controlling who had access to Zavala’s remote hacienda. After Zavala’s death, Hidalgo put on a lavish and stately funeral for the late president and declared that Zavala had dictated his last will and testament to him. Naturally, Zavala’s purported will was that Hidalgo should succeed him as President of Aztlan. A power struggle emerged between leftist ideologues and Hidalgo’s political moderates, which resulted in Hidalgo’s victory and his subsequent ascendancy as the most powerful caudillo in North America.
Much has changed since Hidalgo’s rise to power. The Republic of Aztlan has since shed its leftist ideological trappings and federalized into the United States of Aztlan. The core holdings of the old republic are now the State of Rio Bravo (Estado de Río Bravo). Today, it is the cradle of the largest faction in the American wasteland, which also possesses the largest population, economy, and military in the country. Despite the large economy, Aztlan lags behind other large powers in terms of providing services and public utilities to its population. Around 60% of the population has running water and 40% has electricity, mostly in the larger cities near the Rio Grande and in the Midland SAR. The frontier regions are the worst off and have the lowest standards of living.
As the seat of the federal government, Aztlan authority is direct and centralized here in Rio Bravo. From his palace in Laredo, Hidalgo rules as an unchecked autocrat in the tradition of Latin-American caudillos. The state government here is weak, corrupt, and effectively only a rubber-stamp for Laredo’s direct rule; the only Aztlan state governments with any local power are the Midland Special Administrative Region and the old Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. The other territories of Sonora, New Mexico, Moctezuma, and Tejas are more like loosely-controlled frontier regions with pockets of federal authority supplemented by local, pro-Aztlan warlords. Pecos is another outlying territory with a unique arrangement of local institutions with their own unique power structure parallel to the weak state government.
Life in Aztlan is also heavily affected by the Cult of Santa Muerte, a syncretic folk Catholic tradition that is considered anathema by the Catholic Church in São Paulo. Santa Muerte is a broad, mostly unstructured movement that transcends the antebellum US-Mexico border, but a more hierarchical and regulated strain of it exists within Aztlan. The Communion of the Catholic Church under the Protection of Our Lady of Holy Death is a state-sponsored cult with most of Aztlan’s Hispanic leadership within its ranks, including Hidalgo himself. Resisting the influence of Santa Muerte throughout Aztlan territory and the surrounding regions is the Cristo Rey movement, whose military arm is the Ejército de Cristo Rey, also known as the Cristeros. Cristero militias backed by Roman Catholic clergy make up the single largest organized resistance movement within the United States of Aztlan.
The currency of Aztlan is the Aztlan peso, derived from the antebellum Mexican peso. One Aztlan peso in 2059 is worth approximately $0.00025 in real-life, 2024 USD. Due to the extremely inflated value of the peso, a common unit of transaction is the “stack,” a package of one hundred AZP$10,000 notes. The Mexican peso, which is valued slightly higher than its Aztlan counterpart, is a common sight in Aztlan as well, especially in the southern states. Both pesos together are common trading currencies throughout the American Southwest, similar to Afrikaner guilders and São Paulo reals on the east coast, or Hawaiian dollars on the west coast.
Estado de Pecos
State of Pecos
Capital: Fort Stockton
Classification: Special Case (Bandido Club confederation)
Allegiance: United States of Aztlan
Before there was the United States of Aztlan, there was the Bandido Nation. Sprawled out across southwest Texas, the Bandido Nation was not a single organized faction so much as it was a vast confederation of minor gangs and warlords loosely descended from the prewar Bandidos Motorcycle Club and the Juarez Cartel. Bandido membership was reserved for Hispanics and whites only, mostly consisting of the former.
The functional unit of the Bandido Nation is the club. Each club has a structured hierarchy with strict criteria for entry and a cabinet of executive leadership, all meant to forge a close bond of brotherhood between the Bandidos and govern conduct appropriately. These Bandido clubs each rule a town (and some, in fact, actually governed them) and control its resources. They raise taxes from their own ranks and from among the citizenry; if a club indirectly controls a town instead of ruling it, they collect taxes and other tribute from the local government. In addition to the twenty-two geographically-linked clubs, the Nation also possesses two “nomad” clubs not tied down to any location. The purpose of the nomad clubs is to enforce discipline and serve as an intelligence organization for the Nation—a necessary duty, given their historic proximity to the powerful Midland Government.
The clubs all depend on trade with other clubs to survive, and are required to provide food, fuel, technical repairs, and laborers to other clubs in need, with the understanding that the recipient should return the favor at some later date. Fort Stockton, the largest town in the Nation and home to its most powerful club, serves as a meeting place for the Bandido clubs to resolve their differences or coordinate trade and strategy. Although technically united under a single national president, the Bandido Nation historically had weak national leadership and most clubs were free to govern themselves. Infighting among the clubs occasionally escalated into armed conflict, but they still possessed the ability to consistently close ranks and stave off foreign enemies when the need arose.
The strength of the Bandido Nation waxed and waned over the course of the post-war era. They received a first initial influx of refugees during the Starving Time and overwhelmed panicked, isolated local law enforcement, allowing them to establish their initial core territory. The Amarillo government came close to wiping them out as part of their “Texan redoubt” plan, but the last offensive to eradicate the Bandidos was permanently shelved by the secondary strike on the national capital. The Bandidos again saw a resurgence as Midland’s attentions were shifted away towards Dodge City. As time wore on, however, the Nation began to stagnate and the club system began to demonstrate its age and lack of direction compared to the might of centralized Midland. Yes, Midland was clearly losing the war against Dodge City, but it seemed as if they would be able to take the Bandidos down with them. The situation was turned on its head when the finest prodigy of the Bandido Nation returned to his home city to put his house in order.
At the head of the largest army seen in Texas since the disastrous invasion of Brannigan’s Guard, Buenaventura Hidalgo marched north into Bandido country and brought the twenty-four clubs under his heel. Signing a treaty of peace with Midland, he left them to their own devices as Dodge City continued its southward march. Hidalgo had no intention of destroying the Bandido clubs, nor was it prudent to do so with his current resources; he had come to redeem them and repurpose them for his own ends. Installing himself as the President of the Bandido Nation, he introduced the centralized, autocratic order that the Nation had always lacked.
As dictator of two separate realms, Hidalgo continued to rule both for some time in a kind of personal union: Aztlan in the south, the Bandido Nation in the north. With their combined strength, he drove south and subjugated the four Mexican states on Texas’ southern border, collecting territories like a numismatist hoards coins. After finally conquering Midland itself, Hidalgo reorganized his conquests into the United States of Aztlan. He did not abolish the Bandido Nation, but incorporated the territory under its control into the State of Pecos, named after his home town.
The Pecos state government today is, like its southern neighbor in Laredo, weak, powerless, and little more than a rubber stamp. Some of its larger cities are outposts of federal Aztlan authority, but the real power in Pecos is still the Bandido Nation. After proclaiming the United States of Aztlan, Hidalgo actually resigned his command over the Bandidos and gave it to a loyal subordinate. The Bandido Nation is now officially a subject of the federal government and functions as something like a paramilitary force that transcends the local government, similar to the Knights of St. Mary in the Heartland Social Republic or the Jayhawkers in the East Kansas Free State. In this respect, Aztlan still has a kind of neo-feudal structure, with multiple parallel sources of authority and armed force.
The Bandido Nation is not strictly limited to Pecos and does, in fact, have some chapters and members in the outlying territories, but only within Pecos is it actually a force to rival the Aztlan government. Like the Special Emergency Police in Midland, the Bandidos form a considerable component of the Aztlan armed forces, even if they are not a part of the regular army (the Federal Army of Aztlan, colloquially known as the Federales), and are often called upon to serve in campaigns of conquest. The two nomad clubs also still exist; one still carries out its traditional functions for the Bandido Nation, while the other has been drastically expanded and overhauled into a full-scale intelligence agency for the Aztlan state.
The only other notable faction that once existed in the contemporary State of Pecos was a US Border Patrol regime in Presidio. Their life was similar to that of the Border Patrol in Ajo, Arizona: a struggle for existence amid the isolation of the desert and the chaos of the refugee columns. They maintained unwavering loyalty for the Ingersoll government and its successor in Tyler until their conquest by Hidalgo’s Bandidos and Federales. Today, Presidio is under military rule by the Federales and additionally harbors a local Bandido club.
Estado de Tejas
State of Tejas
Capital: Brady
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Aztlan frontier territory)
Allegiance: United States of Aztlan
North and east of the Aztlan core territories is the rump State of Tejas1, carved from the recent conquests of Hidalgo’s empire. This large, open region serves as an ever-shifting eastern frontier for Aztlan and a continuous battleground. Like New Mexico or Pecos, the state government itself is practically a city-state centered around Brady, the lone island of stability and uninterrupted Aztlan rule. The rest of the state consists of Aztlan military outposts and quasi-independent towns that receive visits from the Aztlan army to enforce their loyalty and sequester tribute. Yet as soon as the Bandidos and Federales exact their toll and leave town, roving resistance bands and guerilla cells come out of hiding and return to the cities. These resistance organizations and the now-defunct factions that gave rise to them are of more note than the Brady government itself, so let us review them.
Texas Rangers (Junction)
The first and oldest of these are the Texas Rangers of Junction. They are unaffiliated with the actual Texas Ranger Division or other self-proclaimed Texas Ranger factions and are instead a neo-nomadic army founded by an isolated Texas State Guard unit. They gained some popular support as a vigilante army that took a hard stance against bandits during the Starving Time, despite their brutal methods. They once were the hegemons of much of central Texas and had nearly settled down into legitimist, neo-feudal rule. Unfortunately, Rangers Chief Ayres was an ardent Ingersoll loyalist (more out of a desire to uphold law and order against banditry than a legitimate belief in Ingersoll’s claim to power), and one of the few highly competent and proactive loyalists, at that. Believing that Ayres could overthrow him, the paranoid President ordered the Chief’s arrest and called on his subordinates to turn him in.
Chief Ayres was captured by an ambitious underling and given to Ingersoll, who had him summarily executed for half-imagined acts of insubordination. With no liege lord to hold its constituent parts together, the Rangers regime collapsed and was largely confined to Junction and its immediate surroundings. Other factions popped up throughout their former territory to keep order, but they lacked the combined strength to stop Aztlan when they attacked. Today, the Rangers have had a relatively good run of luck and have transitioned into a small, but professional guerilla army that continues to evade the Federales while still harrying their lines of reinforcement and communication.
Deutscher Volksbund
Close by to Junction is the town of Fredericksburg, known for its historic German population. Fredericksburg was one of the last cities in the country where German was still regularly spoken by a calculable percentage of households on the eve of the Great War; during the Starving Time, the city embraced its German identity as a cause to rally around and keep out outsiders from San Antonio and Austin. The Texan dialect of the German language was revived and the community was organized around the Deutscher Volksbund, its new main governing body under the protection of the Junction Rangers.
After the collapse of the Rangers, the Volksbund was left to fend for itself, and did so successfully until the Aztlan invasion. There has been an exodus of Germans from Fredericksburg into the free towns to the east. Most German emigres end up in New Braunfels, but some have moved far north into Lutheran communities across the Great Plains. Within Aztlan territory, some German and their allies still fight back with an underground resistance movement of their own: the Landwehr. Given the Landwehr’s disposition as a German militia pitted against Hispanic invaders, it has naturally received an influx of fighters who aren’t ethnically German, but joined for political reasons. This doesn’t necessarily mean Nazism, but there are some National Socialists in the ranks of the Landwehr. The Landwehr is officially headquartered in New Braunfels, which hosts a Volksbund government-in-exile.
Confederate State of Texas
Further north and east in Lampasas was the Confederate State of Texas, a right-wing militia regime that fashioned itself after the Confederate States of old. The CST was more concerned with fighting the other Rangers successor regimes and remnant government authorities; first among their foes were the Law & Order Deputies, a legitimist warband filled with Ingersoll’s minions. They were caught off-guard by the Aztlan invasion and were the most thoroughly destroyed out of all the Ranger successor factions. They have no organized resistance movement today, but small bands of isolated Confederates still keep up the fight against the Federales, and some others have joined other movements, most notably the Knights Hospitaller.
Knights Hospitaller
The Knights Hospitaller are the fourth significant faction derived from the Junction Rangers regime. They are the most recent and the largest of the four, with a significant presence in the north of the state off the main highways and towns. The Hospitallers are a large vigilante army formed in direct opposition to Aztlan. They are led by a central commander, the King of the Hospitallers, who requires his Knights to swear oaths to uphold basic values of decency and good order: to defend the poor and helpless, to fight against secular materialism, to respect women, children, and the elderly, to not kill or steal, to not fight as a mercenary in the service of other powers or individuals, and to not use drugs.
The harsh reality of life in Aztlan Tejas is that the Hospitallers cannot always uphold these commandments and often backslide into banditry, brutality, and the drug trade. The King still hopes to enforce discipline and personally beheads the worst known offenders, but has no real choice but to allow lighter transgressions. The drug problem has gotten worse as the Hospitallers have become dependent on its sale to afford importing weapons. There is even a bizarre, corrupt arrangement where certain Aztlan military governors sell surplus weapons to the Hospitallers in exchange for promises by the Knights to not attack them.
The downward spiral of violence has even led to communities forming local self-defense militias to fight against both the Federales and the Hospitallers. And, in a cruel twist of irony, these very same militias have resorted to banditry and the drug trade to sustain themselves. With constant fighting on the frontiers and within the state itself, the situation in Aztlan Tejas is not likely to improve anytime soon.
Midland Special Administrative Region
Región Administrativa Especial de Midland
Capital: Midland
Classification: Federal legacy (Former federal legacy government)
Allegiance: United States of Aztlan
After signing peace with Dodge City, Luther Pike thought that he had bought himself some breathing room. If Midland hadn’t suffered such a brain drain from Ingersoll’s Great Purge and the subsequent exodus, they might have been able to bide their time and rebuild their strength—but then again, if it weren’t for the Great Purge, they probably wouldn’t have lost the war in the first place. Luther Pike, having survived the Great Purge, was not exceptionally creative or proactive, and the last-ditch offensive to save Midland at the peace table was probably the best idea he ever had.
Pike had some vague notion of resting and recovering from the Dodge City—Midland War, and certainly intended to rule at least his own slice of Texas. After signing the Treaty of Plainview, he proclaimed himself the Governor of Texas to ensure that he was still paramount ruler in his own land, ignoring that there was already a puppet governor in Midland that Ingersoll had previously appointed. Only upon his return to Midland did he sack the governor and unceremoniously force him into retirement—at least the incumbent governor wasn’t killed, but only died in penniless exile in the Taos Republic. The State of Texas—Midland’s brief existence can only be described as lethargic, disjointed, and directionless. Pike and his supporters had no real plan to recover from the war or to retake the rest of the state, which they still claimed. The few remaining Midland loyalists abroad abandoned their pledges of fealty and switched their allegiance to other factions: typically Kahului, Dodge City, or the Government of National Salvation in Tyler.
Shortly into Pike’s rule, President Hidalgo arrived at the gates of Midland, at the head of an army of Aztlan republican troops and southwestern Bandidos. Bled dry by the Dodge City war and bereft of incoming supplies and reinforcements after the loss of their outlying territories, Midland was powerless to resist the oncoming Aztlan advance. Odessa and Big Spring were hard-pressed by a wide pincer attack along the entire front; Midland was next to fall. Rather than fight a doomed defense and die alongside their governor, the federal remnants of Midland overthrew and executed Pike and offered their surrender to Aztlan.
Unlike with Dodge City, Aztlan was close enough to actually enforce their rule over Midland. Hidalgo, ever the pragmatist, had no desire to raze their cities and give their ashes to the Bandido clubs. Midland, Odessa, and Big Spring were worth more intact, running smoothly and providing tribute to Laredo. The Midland Government, the last direct successor of the antebellum United States federal government (at least, by its own reckoning), was reduced to a lowly neo-feudal vassal state, free to govern its own affairs as long as it remained at Laredo’s beck and call. To officiate the arrangement, Hidalgo dissolved the Republic of Aztlan and rearranged all of his lands and subjects into one vast confederation: the United States of Aztlan. From the State of Texas (Midland), the Midland Special Administrative Region was born.
Its territory was vastly reduced, having lost almost everything except a stretch of land along I-20, but most of its population remained under their control, concentrated in the triple cities of Odessa, Midland, and Big Spring. In some respects, the quality of life for the average citizens of these cities increased. The war was over, and people were finally free to rebuild. The psychotic, incompetent Ingersoll dictatorship and the directionless, floundering Pike regime were replaced by a cadre of authoritarian yet competent oligarchs, mostly businessmen and Promethean Energy management who stood on the sidelines as Ingersoll tore his realm apart. Commerce returned and some (mostly said oligarchs) grew wealthy from the new avenue of trade with the rest of Aztlan. Unlike the rest of the federation, Midland was easily capable of providing food, running water, electricity, and other basic amenities to most of its population. Petty crime and banditry were eliminated by efficient state policing. And, humiliating as the surrender was, Hidalgo made surprisingly few demands of the Midland SAR and let them govern themselves freely. For the first time since the Amarillo days, things seemed on the up and up for the region.
Not all was well in the SAR, however, and Aztlan introduced new ills of its own. The return of hundreds of thousands of Mexican retornados displaced most of the remaining Anglo-American population of southern Texas, and most of these emigrants sought refuge in Midland, which was easier to escape to and offered more economic opportunities than the other Texas factions. The economic and social strains of mass immigration, even from culturally integrated white Protestants, was a great burden on the region. Corruption among the SAR political and economic elite has further worsened their troubles, as small businesses were quashed by Midland megacorporations like Promethean Energy.
Upholding the rule of the SAR elites is a three-pronged order of brute force and suppression: the Midland Troopers, the Special Emergency Police, and Promethean Energy Security.
The Midland Troopers are the remnants of the US Army and Texas Military Forces that once served the Midland Government; today, they make up the regular army component of the Midland SAR. As well-equipped, professional troops, they are often called upon by the federal government to serve in campaigns of foreign conquest.
The Special Emergency Police are a secret police and paramilitary organization dating back to the Great Purge; they are something of John Ingersoll’s answer to Brannigan’s Guard, and were the primary instrument that carried out targeted killings and arrests on Ingersoll’s orders. Today, they serve as the main instrument keeping order on the streets of Midland and Odessa, and are sometimes called upon by Laredo to crush uprisings or root out dissenters throughout the republic. As a primarily Anglo-American force, one of their primary duties is to infiltrate Anglo-American resistance cells and destroy them (Predominantly Hispanic resistance movements like the Cristeros are left for the Bandido nomad clubs to tackle). The black uniforms and heavy, modern equipment of the SEP are a fearsome sight throughout the wasteland, and dark tales are told of their methods far and wide throughout the southwest and Great Plains.
The Promethean Energy security forces are a small, niche part of the SAR’s military complex, and are almost never seen outside of the region. Promethean Energy still maintains its government-enforced monopoly on the energy industry within SAR territory, although it still has to complete with other Aztlan energy companies within the wider federation. Its paramilitary security operates much the same here as it does in the rest of the country, although, like USA-DC PE and unlike certain Badlands PE factions, the security forces here do not have the state monopoly on violence and are simply another parallel authority structure. They have some limited civil policing authority within the SAR and operate chiefly as a kind of local gang, especially as corporate strikebreakers.
The large population and relatively intact and developed prewar infrastructure means that the Midland SAR has the highest GDP per capita of the federation and one of the highest in the country. Most of Aztlan’s heavy industry is located here, churning out weapons, vehicles, and other materiel for the Aztlan war machine. The petroleum industry is still very dominant throughout the Midland-Odessa area (which is sometimes even referred to as the Petroplex), and Promethean Energy remains the largest employer in the region, though the combined military forces of the Midland SAR still employ more people, and agriculture trumps all. Its central location in western Texas makes it a critical logistical center, and a large meat-packing industry has developed in recent years to feed the population. Midland even employs a white collar sector and is home to the Aztlan stock exchange.
With so much wealth and a divided, self-interested political elite to control it, it’s only natural that the federal government wants a slice. Midland pays considerable tithes to Laredo on a quarterly basis, in all kinds of commodities: money, food, fuel, machines, weapons, and military manpower. Hidalgo is keen enough to let the local elites keep their fair share in order to ensure their loyalty, but his demands grow larger by the year. Year after year, tribute payment after tribute payment, Laredo steadily chips away at the foundations of Anglo-American autonomy. It is a slow, unseen death, but one that draws closer every year as the Midland SAR finds itself more heavily burdened than it used to be, with less freedoms and greater obligations to the capital. Some wait and wonder when the rug will finally be pulled out from under them and Midland is stripped of its remaining liberties.
Estado de Moctezuma
State of Moctezuma
Capital: Plainview
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Aztlan frontier territory)
Allegiance: United States of Aztlan
In the far north of Aztlan is the State of Moctezuma (sometimes unofficially anglicized as the State of Montezuma), the country’s tumultuous northern frontier. It should come as no surprise that, like the other Aztlan border states, Moctezuma is a lawless land in which Aztlan rule is chiefly restricted to the main towns and highways. Like New Mexico, the rancho system is prominent here, and the region is undergoing Hispanic resettlement after most of the Mexican-American populace fled during the Starving Time and Dodge City—Midland War.
This entire region previously belonged to the Midland government at the end of the Dodge City—Midland War, but was neglected by the inward-focused Petroplex leadership. When Hidalgo came around to subjugating Midland, he pried this region away from the Midland SAR and created a new state for his loyal lieutenants to rule and veterans to settle in.
Because of its historic federal rule and heavy military presence, there is less in the way of organized resistance in Moctezuma, compared to guerilla-ridden Tejas. Federal control is still light, but bandits, raiders, and renegade rancho barons present more of a challenge here than the remnants of defeated factions. The exception are Anglo-American terrorist cells that have fallen in with the George Washington Legion, but they remain the sole organized force contesting Aztlan rule in the region.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the State of Moctezuma is its name. It is officially named after the historic Emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II, but is unofficially named after El Presidente himself, Buenaventura Hidalgo. He likens himself to the Aztec king of old and his successor as the shepherd of the Aztec people, guiding them back towards their ancient homeland of Aztlán, north of Mexico. There is speculation that the comparison may be more than metaphorical. Hidalgo, the patron of the Santa Muerte church, is notable for his interest in the occult, and may in fact believe himself to be the reincarnation of the long-dead emperor. At any rate, he claims to be his indirect descendant, and bestowed upon himself the noble title “Duke of Moctezuma,” reserved for the most senior descendant of Moctezuma II in the continental Spanish Peerage. To distinguish it from other claimants (there are roughly 700 living descendants of Moctezuma II and a half-dozen self-styled Dukes of Moctezuma), his exact title is Duque de Moctezuma de Hidalgo. Given Hidalgo’s increasingly clear ambition of centralizing the United States of Aztlan, some fear that he may outright abolish the republic and crown himself Emperor Moctezuma III.
Buenaventura Hidalgo bears the name of another famous leader of the Mexican people: Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the founding father of the Mexican nation. Though a clergyman he is not, Buenaventura frequently employs comparisons between himself and Don Hidalgo in state propaganda. Between Miguel Hidalgo and Moctezuma II, the Aztlan President wants to make it very clear that he—and not the caudillo dictator of Mexico in Acapulco—is the preeminent and undisputed leader of the Hispanic people in North America. To what lengths he will go in proving that claim remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Despite the great length of this article, we have still only covered Aztlan and the basic background history behind Texas. There are twenty-three factions in Texas, and we’ve only covered one of them so far! We will explore all the rest in Part Two of the Texas entry of the Fallen Continent, which will be published tomorrow. Click the link below to read it, once it’s out.
Index
Click here to read the master post of the series, with links at the bottom of the page to all other Fallen Continent entries.
Previous Entry: Oklahoma
Next Entry: Texas (Part 2)
“Texas” is the traditional spelling used in standard Mexican Spanish orthography, but President Hidalgo christened the state “Tejas” in the Peninsular Spanish fashion to differentiate the state in Brady from the wider antebellum State of Texas and its successors. “Tejas” or “Aztlan Tejas” is typically used by English-speakers to illustrate this difference. Aztlan Tejas does not claim to be any kind of successor to the State of Texas or its Mexican predecessor, and its name is a purely geographical expression.
Excellent work, your best entry so far imo. Will we get a look at the Aztlan states on the Mexican side of the border too?
I'm very curious to hear more about Acadia too.
Man, if only someone better than Ingersoll came to power. Things could have been so much better.