Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Address of the President to Congress December 8, 1914

File No. 817.812/77.

The Minister of Nicaragua to the Secretary of State.

[Translation.]

Legation of Nicaragua,
Washington, May 25, 1914.

Mr. Secretary of State: Through the “Diario de El Salvador” the Government of Nicaragua has learned of the reply that your excellency made, in a note of the 18th of last February, to the protest of the Government of Salvador against the concession in the Gulf of Fonseca made by Nicaragua to the United States, and of the rejoinder made to that note by the Minister of Salvador at Washington, in which rejoinder it is held that the Gulf of Fonseca is not a territorial bay whose waters are comprised within the jurisdiction of the bordering States, and that there exists no convention or agreement terminating the joint and undivided dominion over that bay.

In order to disprove such allegations and to establish the exclusive right of Nicaragua to that part of the Bay of Fonseca that is within its territorial jurisdiction, I have received special instructions from my Government to bring to your excellency’s notice the existence of a document a copy of which I beg leave to enclose and which is the protocol signed by the Boundary Commission of Nicaragua and Honduras and has probative force in boundary questions between the two Republics, which force springs from section 1 of Article II of the Gámez-Bonilla Treaty of 1894.

The exclusive rights 6f Nicaragua to the waters under consideration were defined by the demarkation of the boundary line between Nicaragua and Honduras effected in 1900–1904 by virtue of the aforesaid Gámez-Bonilla Treaty, which line was run from the center of the Bay of Fonseca to the Totecacinte Gap in the Dipilto Range.

The said demarkation is recorded in eight journals signed at San Marcos de Colón, Republic of Honduras, by the said Honduro-Nicaraguan Boundary Commission created by Article I of the said treaty. The agreement of Nicaragua and Honduras as to the partition of the waters of the bay is shown in the second of the eight journals above referred to.

I beg leave to enclose, together with the said instrument, a copy of the map of the Bay of Fonseca, showing the course of the dividing line.

These documents afford superabundant evidence of the fact that since 1900 Nicaragua does not hold the waters of the Bay of Fonseca in joint and undivided dominion with the Republics of Salvador and Honduras, and that therefore the negotiations now pending between the United States and Nicaragua in regard to the said Bay of Fonseca bear on that which clearly and evidently comes within Nicaragua’s dominion.

Before closing this note I must say to your excellency that in granting the naval station in the Gulf of Fonseca to the United States Nicaragua is fully conscious of the rights it holds over those waters in the part adjoining the Nicaraguan coast, and that if its dominion over those waters can no longer be questioned by Honduras—a bordering nation—much less can it be questioned by one that is not adjoining.

I avail [etc.]

Emiliano Chamorro

.

[Inclosure—Extract—Translation.]

[Untitled]

journal ii.

At San Marcos de Colón, June 12, 1900.

The Boundary Joint Commission of the Republics of Honduras and Nicaragua, having before it the public documents produced by both parties in support of their respective rights; the said documents being the territorial titles made and issued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the supreme authority of the former Kingdom of Guatemala, of which the colonial provinces of Comayagua and León formed part; the said documents designating the jurisdiction under which come the places therein referred to whose boundaries in the direction of the above-mentioned provinces generally coincide in one line; there being shown no other demarkation requiring attention in any other document of another nature or of superior force; and that part of the Gulf or Bay of Fonseca adjoining their coasts, except where there is between these the distance of six marine leagues, belonging to both States; after having made a careful survey of the territory lying between the said Gulf or Bay of Fonseca and the Botija Ridge; after performing the appropriate geodetic operations; and after consulting such charts as were deemed acceptable—

Agrees that the dividing line between the territories of Honduras and Nicaragua in the section referred to in the preceding section is fixed as follows:

From the point known by the name of Amatillo, in the lower part of the Rio Negro, the dividing line is a straight line run toward the volcano of Cosiguina, in an astronomical direction south eighty-six degrees thirty minutes west (S. 86° 30’ W.) and over a distance of about thirty-seven kilometers (37 kms) to the middle point of the Bay of Fonseca, at the same distance from the coast of each Republic, on this side; and from that point follows the division of the waters of the Bay along a line also equidistant from the said coasts until it reaches the middle of the distance lying between the northern part of Cosiguina Point and the southern part of Tigre Island. From the said Amatillo Point the line continues along the middle of the above-mentioned Rio Negro, upstream [etc.]