File No. 823.032/10.

The American Minister to the Secretary of State.

[Extract.]
No. 227.]

Sir: I have the honor to enclose herewith extracts from the message delivered by President Billinghurst to the Peruvian Congress on the 28th day of July, 1913, which includes such topics as may be of interest to the Department.

I have [etc.]

H. Clay Howard.
[Inclosure—Translation.—Extract.]

united states of america.

At the beginning of the present year the American Foreign Office through its representative here, expressed to our Government its desire to learn the mind of the Peruvian Government with regard to the opening of the Panama Canal and the bearing of that work on the different Peruvian enterprises, as well as our Government’s economic policy with respect to the Canal and its influence on the development of our home and foreign trade.

The American Foreign Office also expressed its keen desire to be furnished with a summary of the projects, both municipal and national, for the improvement of our ports and harbors as well as sanitary works.

Our ideas and intentions in this interesting matter were duly communicated to the American Government.

Our Minister at Washington has already visited San Francisco, California, with the object of selecting a site for the installation of our Pavilion at the International Exposition of 1915, which is to celebrate the termination of the Panama Canal.

In view of the positive interest to the solution of the problem of national education, which is the subject to be dealt with at the Congress of School Hygiene to meet at Buffalo in August next, our Government has accepted the invitation tendered it by the United States and appointed as its Delegates, Dr. Luis Miró Quesada, a distinguished Professor of Pedagogy of the University of St. Mark, and Dr. Francisco Graña, Professor of Hygiene of the Faculty of Medicine.

In May last the capital was visited by a distinguished and numerous group of representatives of the Chamber of Commerce of Boston who were received with proper attention and cordiality.

putumayo affair.

The region of the Putumayo which, for reasons it would be sad to recall, has given cause for comment and exaggerated alarm both at home and abroad, which have not always been based on facts, has been the object of continual [Page 1141] and preferential attention on the part of the Government, with such success that, thanks to the measures adopted, both judicial and administrative action are widely felt in our river regions within a spirit of order, of guaranties, and the tranquillity so peremptorily required.

In order to obtain the practical and immediate results aimed at by the various measures taken for the evangelization and civilization of the tribes of aborigines which are still to be found in a savage state in that section of our territory, the Government is engaged in securing for those regions the most appropriate and efficacious ecclesiastical administration so that the same may be felt in the most positive manner and in harmony with the national patronage and the sovereign rights of the Republic.

The Government, in its lively desire to carry out the dictates of justice, and interested as it is in maintaining the good name of the Nation, has endeavored at all times to facilitate the prosecution of the trial which was instituted in consequence of the criminal acts committed in the rubber regions of the Putumayo, in order that the punishment of the law shall fall on the guilty parties. For that purpose the Government has given to the judicial functionaries all the guaranties necessary for the accomplishment of their duties and at the same time has appointed to hold the public offices men of fitting, honest and energetic character who shall consolidate a régime of morality and the supremacy of the law in that part of our territory.

The result so far obtained is completely satisfactory as proved by the rapid and effective action of justice and the public tranquillity which reigns in those districts.

Alarm and uneasiness have therefore disappeared which might affect the prestige of the Nation with regard to the crimes of a purely individual character perpetrated in former years which have given to the foreign press a theme on which to deal harshly with Peru, without bearing in mind events which have recently happened in regions which are much nearer to the centers of civilization.

peru-ecuador boundary dispute.

[Summary.]

The questions at issue in connection with the Peru-Ecuador boundary1 have been taken up by the two Governments at some length and in a spirit of the greatest cordiality. The Government of Peru is in accord with the suggestion made by the Mediatory Powers in 1910, that the question be brought before The Hague for settlement A bulletin issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs deals at considerable length with the results of the various conferences, as well as with the deplorable happenings on the Morona river.

  1. See For. Rel. 1912, p. XI; and this volume, infra.