File No. 812.00/15087.
The Brazilian Minister to Mexico to the Secretary of State.
Mexico City, May 7, 1915.
Sir: I have been requested by the American Society of Mexico and the International Committee to transmit to you the following document:
The American Society of Mexico and the International Committee of Foreign Residents unite in an expression of thanks and appreciation for the efforts made by the American Government and representatives, through which thirty-four sacks of foreign mail have just been received here from the accumulations at Vera Cruz, the first from there since February.
Urgent appeal is hereby made to the Washington Government that effective steps be taken to put the capital city of Mexico again into communication with the world by the reopening of at least one railway line for traffic to Vera Cruz or the northern border. Isolation has been almost complete since the beginning of the present year. The movement of passengers, freight and mails has been stopped and private cablegrams are unwarrantably censored.
The capital is suffering a lingering death. The indifference of those engaged in the present warfare of factions toward the necessities of the great majority of the people of Mexico, native and foreign, is daily bringing about greater complications, which will render a solution of the Mexican problem still more difficult.
The food situation is acute and there is much suffering in the city. Flour is selling up to one peso per pound (equal to the daily wage of a common laborer, who cannot indulge in such food); meat also up to a peso per pound, and corn twenty-five centavos a pound. Many articles of medical supplies in the city are exhausted and hospitals have been stripped of surgical instruments by outgoing troops. There is urgent need of carbons for street lamps and of other articles vital to public health and protection.
The Washington Government two months ago renewed its advice that Americans leave Mexico until conditions become more settled and followed it with the suggestion from General Carranza that other foreigners also leave Mexico City. Unfortunately there has been no way open to act upon the advice since it was given, even for those Americans and other foreign residents whose circumstances and responsibilities would permit them to leave.
Three travelers were shot last week while trying to get from this city to Pachuca, fifty miles away. A number of Americans who have attempted recently to leave by automobile or other conveyance have been turned back by armed men, regardless of passports some of which were signed by the Convention President, Roque Gonzales Garza.
The censorship of private and commercial telegrams by the Conventionalist authorities here, and also the Carrancistas at Vera Cruz, is so strict that residents cannot explain to relatives or correspondents abroad either their situation or their actions. Cablegrams cannot be sent if they refer to stoppage of mails or other abnormal conditions, although such interference with foreign service is in contravention of the cable company’s franchise, while the country is not engaged in foreign war. Remittances cannot be made by mail and this interference with cablegrams renders difficult or impossible arrangement by telegraph of maturing obligations, such as life-insurance premiums and commercial paper. Foreign residents who are awaiting mail remittances from abroad are, many of them, dependent temporarily on assistance from friends here or from relief committees.
Fresh evidences of anti-American feeling are seen in proposed legislation, anonymous threatening letters, public speeches, utterances by delegates in the Convention, and in the Mexican press. This attitude toward Americans is [Page 690] justified by Mexicans here on the ground that the United States is showing partiality toward the Carrancista cause.
Attention must be called to the report that goods at Vera Cruz destined for the merchants of this city (on some of which the import duties have already been paid) and held for months in Government ware-houses at Vera Cruz because of closing of the railways, are now being removed without hindrance by the authorities there, and sold or used by persons having no right or claim to warrant such action; and this despite the assurances of protection given by the Carrancista Government when the American troops were withdrawn from Vera Cruz.
The hope is expressed among foreigners here that the special representatives from the United States who are attached to particular chiefs may not be deterred, by an excessive desire to maintain agreeable relations with those leaders, from furnishing the Washington Government with complete, accurate, and impartial reports of what actually transpires in their locality.
With renewed assurances [etc.]