File No. 3146.
Ambassador Thompson to the Secretary of State.
Mexico, December 7, 1906.
Sir: Permit me to bring to the department’s attention a passport complication on which I would be pleased to have an opinion.
A few days ago a man, giving the name of Rafael J. del Rio y Rico, called at the embassy and presented to me a letter of introduction, as per copy inclosed,a from Mr. Lawrence F. Bedford, an attorney-at-law of this city, and asked me to take up with the Mexican Government a certain case, which was brought to the attention of the department by former Ambassador Clayton, as per his despatch No. 1645, of December 5, 1902.a A few days later he again called at the embassy and applied for the renewal of a passport that was issued under General Clayton’s signature to Rafael J. del Rio y Rico. In reading through the papers filed in the embassy relative to the above case I [Page 836] found on inclosure 13 of the above-mentioned dispatch that the real name of the applicant, according to his own statement, is José de la Cruz Catalino Rico. It also appears that in his application for American citizenship, inclosure 8 in said dispatch, filed in the district court for the southern district of the State of New York, he gave the name of Rafael Rico, and as it is evident that Mr. Rico, in securing his first passport under his assumed name of Rafael J. del Rio y Rico and in asking for its renewal at the present time, has sought to establish an identity which has been disputed in the courts of this country, as shown by the inclosures which accompanied General Clayton’s above-mentioned dispatch, and to avail himself of his American citizenship (claimed he having been born in Mexico and lived here during the last eleven years) to base a claim against the Mexican Government, I have, therefore, deemed it advisable to obtain the views of the department as to whether the passport in question should be renewed under the name of Rafael J. del Rio y Rico, regardless of Mr. Rico’s own declaration that his real name is José de la Cruz Catalino Rico, and that his application for American citizenship shows the name of Rafael Rico.
The name of Rico is the surname of his mother, while that of del Rio is the surname of the man claimed by the applicant to be his father, and Mr. Rico, following the custom of Spanish countries, has made up with the above two surnames and his assumed first name that of Rafael J. del Rio y Rico, under which he has applied for the passport in question.
I have, etc.,