Granville to José Maria Lafragua, December 20, 1872
Earl Granville to Mr. Lafragua.
Mr. Minister: As relations between Great Britain and Mexico are actually suspended, I have the honor to write directly to your excellency, in the hope of arriving at a pacific solution of a question which, probably, is well known to your excellency, and which creates at this moment a very painful sensation throughout England. I think it hardly necessary to say that I allude to the incursions made by Mexican Indians on the British territory of Honduras.
The circumstances of the last incursion are the following:
About 8 o’clock on the morning of the 1st of September last an attack was made on the city of Orange Walk, British Honduras, by a numerous force of Ycaichi Indians, supposed to be at from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men proceeding from Mexican territory and commanded by a man named Marcos Canul, who was said, and he is still believed, to be in the service of the government of Campeche, one of the States of the Mexican confederation.
The attack was a complete surprise, and had it not been for the great bravery of the garrison, the police, and the inhabitants, the whole city would have been sacked, the English population assassinated, and, according to all probability, other towns also attacked.
However that may be, after a desperate struggle, which lasted until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the Indians retired and took refuge on Mexican territory, but not until they did great injury.
The officer who commanded the troops was severely wounded, two soldiers were killed, and fourteen wounded, eight of them dangerously so; a civilian, named Gonzales, Yutecan by birth, was brutally assassinated, and twenty-five or thirty other persons received injuries more or less serious, from the results of which two have died. Fifteen houses were burned to the ground, comprising in that number that of the mayor substitute, that of the guard of police, and the houses of the officers and all they contained; all the stores were robbed and almost all the private houses forced and plundered.
Besides the real loss of life and property caused in this manner, it is evident that the consequences of incursions of this nature are seriously opposed to the prosperity of the colony of British Honduras.
The said attack was perpetrated by a band of robbers, citizens of Mexico, proceeding from Mexican territory and commanded by a person who is believed to be employed by the government of a Mexican State. The bandits, repulsed, took refuge again beyond the Mexican frontier, and there they were protected against the consequences of their crime. This is not the only incident of this kind; a like inroad took place in 1870, and the colony has no security against a renewal of such attempts from one moment to another.
The government of Her Majesty considers that it has the right to address itself to the Mexican government in order that it may recompense in a convenient manner the losses occasioned by these outrages, and that it may take steps for the punishment of the criminals. It has equally the right to hope that the Mexican government will take proper measures to prevent in future such incursions on British territory.
It would be intolerable to permit a band of robbers to pass the frontiers to rob a British colony and to assassinate many of its inhabitants; that it should retire afterward to Mexican territory, and there, without fear of being punished, that it should be at liberty to prepare new incursions against peaceable inhabitants.
If, as the government of Her Majesty believes, the relations of the facts represented here cannot be controverted in their principal points, and that the government of Her Majesty, trusting in the justice of the statement in this affair, will cause the government of Mexico to attend to it soon, so that it will not be obliged to take measures in its own hands to obtain satisfaction for the past and security for the future.