I don’t think it would have held together in the long run. But I never thought about that it was quick profiteering by the bankers. You could be right on that as well.
The term BRIC was originally developed in the context of foreign investment strategies. It was introduced in the 2001 publication, Building Better Global Economic BRICs by then-chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Jim O’Neill
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/archive/building-better.html
The foreign ministers of the initial four BRIC General states (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) met in New York City in September 2006 at the margins of the General Debate of the UN Assembly, beginning a series of high-level meetings.
Goldman Sachs also created “frontier markets” mutual fund and another one whose name escapes me (MEERKAT or something) - which did contain Mexico.
I was with JP Morgan at the time and the investments in the Indian stock market (BSE) were wowzer = basic ETFs were giving 45% per annum returns and you could double your money in a year if you read a bit.
It crashed in 2008 Feb - not depression level, but it still crashed.
But while it was rising, it was a great marketing ploy for the Investment bankers