File No. 812.00/7298.
The Constitutionalist Chief, Yenustiano Carranza, Governor of Coahuila, to the President.
I hear from Laredo, Texas, that the military authority of that place has permitted the importation into Laredo, Mexico, for General [Page 796] Trucy, chief of the Huerta forces, of two machine-guns and 5,000 cartridges. As the illegal government of Huerta has not been recognized by Your Excellency, I judge that you must consider General Huerta and his officers to have a status inferior to mine as Constitutional Governor of the State and also chief of all the Constitutionalist forces of the Republic, who have refused to recognize the government deriving from a military conspiracy.
The Government in my charge therefore believes that if the United States has permitted or permits the importation of arms and munitions of war for Huerta’s forces, an equal concession should be made to the Constitutional Government of this State, which I represent, and to the States and Chiefs who are fighting for the reestablishment of legal order in Mexico, thus placing the contending parties on an equal footing in the war now involving the Republic.
I therefore beg Your Excellency’s Government to permit the importation of the arms and munitions of war needed by the forces of legal order which I represent, without difficulties being made by the United States authorities.
I trust that Your Excellency will pardon the Government in my charge for thus addressing you directly; it is an irregularity due to my Government’s inability to act through the Minister for Foreign Affairs of my country, as I do not recognize as legal the so-called government of General Huerta.
President of the Mexican Republic.
Piedras Negras, Coahuila.