Loaeza to Fernando Cruz, April 10, 1882
Mr. Loaeza to Mr. Cruz.
Mr. Minister: I have just received two copies of the report presented by your excellency to the legislature last month; which document I have read attentively, giving special attention to the portion referring to the relations between Guatemala and Mexico. Speaking of the question of boundaries, your excellency says that, “It is believed with sufficient reason that before the termination of the year the said question may be completely and satisfactorily arranged, it being impossible for the Government of Guatemala to have any other aspiration than that of maintaining its rights, and that the territory legitimately belonging to the republic may not be dismembered, for whose integrity it has to watch according to the fundamental law.” Your excellency also expresses your opinion that all the charges made against the Government of Guatemala in the report which the secretary of state and of the department of foreign relations of Mexico remitted to the Congress of the Union of my country, the 10th of last September, “are absolutely destitute of justice.” That the government of which your excellency forms part is pleased that Mexico recognizes the judicial fact that the Uriarte-Vallarta convention has legally expired; “and that the President of the republic does not remember having proposed that a new convention be made with the intention of reviving the former ones.” Finally, your excellency, penetrating into the slippery region of suppositions, affirms that, “it is hidden from no one, that if it were sufficient that the federal Government of Mexico should declare, upon its own authority, that to it belonged any part whatever of the territory of Guatemala, the day that it should be pleased to declare that the whole extent of the republic belonged to it, your excellency’s government would have to acknowledge that resolution, and to recognize the legitimacy of the title which it would create, or else to give an offense which would necessitate a reparation.”
I wish that your excellency’s hope that during the present year the question of boundaries may be terminated in a satisfactory manner may as soon as possible be an accomplished fact, because the desire, of my government in regard to the affair is: that the dividing line between the two republics be fixed, perfectly determined, in order that there may be no room for doubts, and that the vexatious difficulties which are making themselves felt may be avoided.
As your excellency’s report to which I refer contains asseverations which affect the good name of my country, and it may be necessary that they be removed, I remit to my government a copy of the said document; but this does not prevent me from fulfilling the duty of expressing in the present note my dissent from the facts and appreciations (?) given by your excellency, in order that at no time consequences may be deduced from my silence. I permit myself to rectify only the most important errors.
Although it cannot be considered as a serious hypothesis that it could occur to Mexico to declare of its own authority that all the Republic of Guatemala belonged to it, taking into consideration the elevated character and illustriousness of the functionary who formulates it, I am obliged to inform him that there is no fact authorizing a supposition of such a nature.
Mexico, Mr. Minister, prides herself on nothing so much as on her never deviating from rectitude; my country does not need nor wish for foreign territories; she possesses sufficient territory for a population ten times greater than that she has, and if your excellency will please to read the declarations that, competently authorized, are made by the editor of the Diario Oficial of the Government of the United Mexican States, in No. 59 of this periodical, dated the 10th of last month (of which I take the liberty of inclosing a copy), you will be convinced of the truth stated.
It is certain that the Government of Mexico recognizes that the effects of the convention of December 7, 1877, and those of its prorogation of May 3, 1879, legally ceased on account of the termination of the first period stipulated in the last, without the commission of experts having finished its labors in the first section of the frontier line, and as the Most Excellent President of this republic does not remember, as your excellency says, having proposed that a new convention be made, with the intention of reviving the former ones, I am able to clear up that fact.
In a note dated June 25, 1881, I had the honor to inform, among other things, the department under your very worthy charge, as follows: An incident which concerns the minister of foreign affairs of my country, in the note which causes this answer, is not referred to by your excellency in your very esteemed note which I have the honor to answer, and it is the fact that the undersigned, by order of his government, had the honor to insinuate to the Most Excellent President of this republic the convenience of celebrating a new convention, which should revive that of December 7, 1877, and that, having received such insinuation favorably, the First Magistrate himself dictated his agreement, that it might be transmitted to the minister of Guatemala in Mexico, in order that the treaty might be celebrated; and that Señor Herrera had not informed the department of foreign relations of Mexico that he was authorized to that effect.” And the 29th of the same month, Dr. Lorenzo Montufar, in his character of secretary of foreign relations, which he was then, had the kindness to answer me, among other things, as follows: “Instructions were sent to Señor Herrera, that immediately he address himself to the secretary (department) of state of the Mexican Republic, with the end of entering into negotiations over the new convention referred to in your excellency’s esteemed note, which I answer to-day.”
In consequence, when the secretary of foreign relations of Mexico stated in the report of last September that the Most Excellent President of this republic had accepted the proposition which the Mexican Government made him, through me, to revive the said conventions, he expressed a truth entirely indisputable.
Before closing, will your excellency permit me to express my surprise to see expressed, in the document to which I refer, that: the Government of Guatemala is pleased that Mexico recognizes the juridical truth that the Uriarte Vallarta convention has legally expired, because this manifestation of pleasure contrasts with that of the desire which your excellency says the government has to come to a prompt and complete arrangement of the question of boundaries, when the scientific investigations stipulated in the said convention must have been exceedingly useful, furnishing the data necessary for its greater exactness.
Although at the risk, Mr. Minister, of abusing your excellency’s kindness, I permit myself to ask you to be pleased to insert this dispatch in the Guatemalteco, providing there should be no objections.
Renewing, &c.,