File No. 711.1216M/203.
The Secretary of State to the Mexican Ambassador.
Washington, January 26, 1911.
Excellency: With reference to the note of your excellency of January 9, 1911, concerning the contracts made or which may be made by the Colorado River Land Co., S. A., a Mexican corporation, with the contractors engaged or who may be engaged to do the work projected to protect the Imperial Valley and other lands located on the banks of the Colorado River, I have the honor to say that Mr. J. A. Ockerson, C. E., as attorney for that company, probably made use of the name of the Government of the United States of America in those contracts only with the object of assuring their most efficient fulfillment on the part of the contractors and also to comply with certain fiscal requirements of our laws, inasmuch as those contracts were made in this country; but it was never intended to create by those contracts any rights in favor of this Government to the ownership of the land nor, of course, to its sovereignty nor any other rights to any portion of the Mexican territory nor to the works to be built on it, as it has already been decided and agreed upon by this Government and the Government of the United States of Mexico that the said works shall be executed by the Colorado River Land Co., a Mexican corporation, in accordance with the authority granted to said company by the Mexican Government and under the inspection of an engineer appointed by your Government, it not being deemed necessary to give such works any international character. The agreement was fully ratified in the exchange of the note of your embassy of December 20, 1910, and of that of this Department of December 24, 1910.
But to make this statement still more clear, this Government declares that the references made to the United States of America in the contracts, which references are objectionable to the Mexican Government, have no legal value in any case in which they may be in opposition to the agreement made by the two Governments concerning the works of protection to be executed by the Colorado River Land Co.
Accept, etc.,