Señor Cayetano Romero to Mr. Foster.
Washington, December 28, 1892.
My dear Mr. Foster: I have received your note of yesterday, in which you were pleased to inclose the reply of the Secretary of War to the two communications addressed to him by you on the 14th and 15th instant, transmitting a copy of my notes of the 13th and 14th, relative to the incursions into Mexico by armed forces from this side of the boundary line, in which, as you state, that officer calls attention to the difficulties with which his Department has to contend in preventing violations of the neutrality laws of the United States, owing to the fact that those bands are secretly organized in Texas, and do not appear as organized bodies until they actually cross the Rio Grande, and scatter in all directions on their return to American soil, which renders their pursuit very difficult, if not impossible, especially since they afford no opportunity to the troops to attack them.
You further inform me that the military department of Texas has sent all the forces at its disposal in pursuit of the outlaws, which forces will soon be joined by three troops of cavalry which have left Fort Riley, Kans., for the frontier, at great expense and inconvenience to the Government, and you state that although the military authorities have no information with regard to the detention of Mexican soldiers in Texas, of which I apprised you in one of my notes, yet if the troops now pursuing the marauders succeed in effecting their capture, and find any Mexican soldiers held as prisoners, they will at once release and place them under the protection of the United States, adding that you think proper, in this connection to advert to the scanty cooperation or assistance that is lent on the right bank of the Rio Grande to the efforts which the Government of the United States is making to prevent these incursions, since the general commanding the army is sure that if my Government kept a number of troops on the frontier proportionate to that now in Texas, the attack at San Ignacio would have been almost impossible.
I this day send a copy of your note to my Government for its information, and in order that it may answer the charge that is made against it of not cooperating with that of this country in suppressing the disturbances now taking place on that frontier by keeping a number of troops there equal to that of those in Texas, since I am not in possession of data enabling me to say whether this assertion is or is not well founded.
I must say, however, that the Government of Mexico will take proper care of its extensive frontier, and that it will spare no pains in doing so, as is shown by the fact that the outlaws have been obliged to return to this country after their various raids, never having remained [Page 431] for more than a few hours in Mexican territory, whither they go for the sole purpose of robbing and plundering.
As regards the Mexican soldiers who are held at San Ignacio, it is proper for me to inform you that I am advised, by private letters which I have received from Texas, that the inhabitants of that town, who are in sympathy with the outlaws, have so frightened the prisoners by making them believe that they will be shot if they return to their country, that it is now said that they refuse to return and declare that they came to that place of their own free will, and that it is not true that they have ever been held as prisoners. As it is a fact which can easily be proved that they have been so held, it would be well for the Federal Government to send a competent and impartial person to that place for the purpose of making a rigid investigation of this case, as an act of justice to the Government of Mexico.
I am, etc.,