File No. 812.63/36.
Consul Letcher to the Secretary of State.
Chihuahua, November 21, 1914.
Sir: I have the honor to ask an instruction as to how Americans should be advised in the matter of the second payment of mining fees and taxes which were paid the Huerta de facto government during its continuance, as demanded under the decree of General Carranza of August 29, 1914, when advice upon the question may be asked of this office. I may state that I now have a concrete case [Page 728] before me through a letter from Mr. Louis Lane, who was formerly a resident of Chihuahua but who is now residing in Havana, Cuba. Mr. Lane writes under date October 29 that he filed claims to twelve pertenencias of mineral land before the proper office in the city of Chihuahua on August 26, 1913; that he has now seen a copy of General Carranza’s decree, under the terms of which all acts of the Huerta government were declared null and void but in the excepted case of mining claims interested parties would be allowed sixty days from the date of the decree to revalidate such claims by a repayment of fees and taxes paid the Huerta government; and that he wishes to know in the present chaotic circumstances surrounding the payment of fees and taxes corresponding to his own mining properties how best to proceed to give protection to his titles.
It is pertinent to say that in the hope that the local authorities might under present conditions give Mr. Lane a useful suggestion in the matter described, I addressed a note to Mr. F. Gonzalez Garza, then acting governor of the state of Chihuahua, describing Mr. Lane’s case and asking what steps should be pursued by Mr. Lane to protect his interests. Mr. Gonzalez Garza replied that he would counsel Mr. Lane to comply with the Carranza decree, paying the taxes and fees in the present case to the state government, in return for which the state government would issue a receipt which would serve to protect him against the enforcement of the penalties of the Carranza decree in the future.
Inasmuch as the mining interests of the Republic of Mexico are exclusively under the central Government, and inasmuch, further, as no relations at present are maintained between the state of Chihuahua and the said central Government of Mexico, it appears to me that the advice of Mr. Gonzalez Garza, if followed, would imperfectly protect Mr. Lane’s rights, and that repaying taxes once paid to a superior de facto authority to an inferior and not coordinate authority, might come to constitute the first in a series of repayments to a line of succeeding governments which would amount to an intolerable hardship upon him.
I have merely remitted to Mr. Lane a copy of Mr. Gonzalez Garza’s letter. I trust, however, that the Department may not find it inexpedient to instruct me how the many Americans in this locality who are in a situation similar to Mr. Lane’s may be advised in the premises.
I have [etc.]