Mexico has gold, silver, copper, iron, molybdenum, lead, zinc, manganese, arsenic and tellurium. They have great farmland, timber, water, Atlantic and Pacific ports, a border with the most prosperous nation on earth. They have a decent hard working workforce. They have world class tourism capability.
So why is Mexico always broke? I think it comes down to a long history of Euro style oligarchy and the top down version of Catholicism that reigns over them.
Their hardware is fine, they are running the wrong operating system.
“So why is Mexico always broke?”
..............
Corruption, profiteering, and bribery, 24/7.
Mexico had their Communist style Catholic purges and installed the state as their new religion 100 years ago. Now its just a big, statist kleptocracy, latin style.
History is never a neat narrative, but Mexican history seems (to my beginner-mind) to be awfully complex. For instance, although the Church was very powerful in the Mexican colonial era, its wealth, influence and status eroded fairly early, starting in the Bourbon era (mid-1700's).
After bumpy ups and downs, by the mid-nineteenth century, Mexican liberals fully separated Church and State and undermined the political and economic role of the Church.
In the midst of the left-wing Mexican Revolution (1910-20) the revolutionary Constitution of 1917 sparked the Constitutionalists' expulsion of thousands of priests, physical attacks on churches, chapels and shrines, with altars and statues smashed, churches seized to be used as storehouses and stables. (And what else was going on in 1917, hey? Think think think...)
The Mexican government actively attempted to eliminate the Catholic Church's legal existence in Mexico. The anti-Catholic extremism ---including the seizure and nationalization of all Catholic schools, hospitals and properties,the enforcement of mandatory attendance in government schools teaching a Marxist curriculum, the banning of any religious observance outside of Church buildings, and the stripping of the clergy of both the right to vote and the right to even comment on public affairs ---continued on and off for decades.
According to Wikipedia (LINK) there were 4,500 priests in Mexico before the rebellion, but by 1934 there were only 334 --- to serve fifteen million people. The rest had been eliminated by emigration, expulsion and assassination.
After that, the Mexican government backed away from its enforcement of many of the anticlerical articles of the constitution--- which nevertheless remained on the books. It varies regionally, but in some areas Mexico remained "officially" as stridently secularist as --- say --- France.
So to say that Mexican progress has been stymied by the top-down power of the Catholic Church is ---I think --- dubious from a historic point of view.
But then, why has this resource-rich and people-rich nation been so crippled from a point of view of healthy economic development?
I do think the USA has a big advantage of having a stable Constitutional basis, and no war on our shores for the past 150 years.
I also think Mexico's development has been skewed with international trade relationships which resulted in billionaires at the top and squalor at the bottom. Think NAFTA.
In that context, it'll be interesting to see how Mexico does since Trump scuttled NAFTA and got USMCA treaty instead. I am ignorant about the economic details, but I think it could help Mexico with the overhauling of their economy.
I hope! We'll see!