Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 7, 1911

File No. 814.0441.

The American Minister to the Secretary of State.

[Extract.]

American Legation,
Guatemala, September 16, 1910.

No. 203.]

Sir: It has been announced by the Mexican press that all foreigners arrested and placed in Mexican prisons are in future to be permitted to communicate with the diplomatic or consular representatives of their Governments, and that the system of “incomunicación” of the Spanish law is to be modified.

Whether this announcement is true or not I shall be glad to receive the Department’s authority to approach President Estrada Cabrera on this subject. The complete isolation of prisoners in the first stages of investigation should not, I think, apply to the diplomatic or consular representatives of a foreign Government in the case of their nationals.

If the right of the diplomatic or consular representative to communicate with his imprisoned nationals in the presence of the local authorities at any stage of imprisonment were conceded, fewer occasions would arise for insistence on their right.

I have, etc.,

W. F. Sands.