No. 168.
Señor Montúfar to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Washington, June 15, 1882. (Received June 15.)
Sir: The communication of your excellency of the 5th instant, which I had the honor to receive in New York, deserves my highest attention and respect.
[Page 329]In it your excellency presents to me a parallel between the proposition designated by Señor Romero as No, 2 and that which I present in substitution.
Your excellency tells me that Señor Romero considers that Chiapas, as a State, belongs to Mexico in like manner as New York belongs to the United States.
Señor Romero will permit me to answer in this manner:
New York was one of the thirteen colonies which became independent of England, and no nation in the world has ever alleged that she does not belong to the United States.
Chiapas belonged to Guatemala for three hundred years.
In the year 1824 she was declared a part of the Mexican Republic in virtue of an illegal plebiscite, inasmuch as the votes were not taken before two commissioners, one of Mexico and the other of Guatemala, as was agreed upon, but only before the commissioner of Mexico, a Mexican force being at the time imposed on the frontier.
Soconusco belonged to Guatemala.
A treaty between Mexico and Guatemala arranged, in 1829, that neither the forces of Mexico nor of Guatemala shall enter Soconusco until a treaty touching boundaries shall decide the questions.
In the year 1842 the Mexican General Santa Anna, breaking that treaty, entered Soconusco and annexed it to Mexico.
Here is the title by which Mexico possesses Socunusco.
Very different is the title by which the United States holds the State of New York.
After the outrage of Santa Anna, Mexico declared that Chiapas and Soconusco should form a State of the Federation, and therefore does not desire that it shall be submitted to arbitration to ascertain the right or title by which the Mexicans possess Soconusco.
This is to sanction the law of conquest.
Nothing is easier to a nation relatively strong than to take territory from one that is weak; and nothing is more easy, after such territory has been taken, than to say in a law that that territory constitutes part of the nation which has taken it, and consequently not to reduce the question to arbitration.
The theories of Mexico are essentially doctrines which sanctify in the New World the law of force and the law of conquest.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to terminate this disagreeable and mournful question, and nothing will be more gratifying to Guatemala than to terminate it under the influence of a mediator of a common friend—the United States.
Would that the arbitration be not limited to this line, but lay down the entire divisional line between the Mexican States and the Republic of Guatemala, even although for this location two or three years more would be necessary.
In November I had the honor to say to Mr. Blaine, and afterwards I had the honor to repeat to your excellency, that Guatemala places the matter in the hands of the Government of the United States. In this view your excellency may dictate the bases of the arbitration.
Please settle with Señor Romero such bases, under the full confidence that I will subscribe to whatever you will settle.
I am your excellency’s, &c.,