File No. 815.04412/1
Consul Boyle to the Secretary of State
Puerto Cortés , May 12, 1916 .
Sir: I have the honor to quote Decree No. 24 of the Congress of Honduras, just published in El Comercio, a weekly newspaper of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, under date of May 6, 1916, which is the first notice that this office has had that the decree, reported as projected, was actually a law.
A translation of this decree is as follows:
- Art. 1. In the application of the penalties provided for by Article 554 of the Penal Code, the owner of an insured building or edifice is presumed to be the author of any fire destroying the same, until the contrary shall have been proven.
- Art. 2. Judges of Instruction shall initiate proceedings on having notice of the fact, and shall place in detention the person on whom falls the presumption of responsibility.
- Art. 3. In the cases of incendiarism referred to in Article 554 of the Penal Code, the guilty parties shall be judged as much for that crime as for the swindling and embezzlement which was the object of the act of incendiarism.
- Art. 4. No petition for the payment of insurance shall be considered until the criminal proceedings shall have been concluded, and the insured shall have demonstrated his innocence.
The present law shall take effect thirty days after its publication.
It is hardly necessary that I inform you that the large and influential American colony in this district, numbering many owners of business, residential and rural properties, are up in arms against a law which by its provisions prejudges them guilty of intention to commit arson by the simple act of taking out insurance to protect themselves against loss, and which reverses the modern conception of justice, that a man is innocent until proven guilty, by making it essential that he prove his innocence of a crime fixed on him solely because he protected himself against loss by the world-recognized policy of taking out insurance.
Article 33 of the Constitution of Honduras provides that a man cannot be imprisoned without at least the grave presumption that he is guilty of the act with which he is charged.
That the Government of Honduras can by law provide that the mere fact that a property was insured, recognized the world over as a strictly business transaction, is sufficient ground to indict the owner as guilty of arson, and then reverse all accepted judicial procedure by requiring him to prove his innocence, is a power far beyond my comprehension to understand.
[Page 393]I must also invite your attention to the fact that the crime of arson is unbailable in Honduras, and that the owner of an insured property, who is so unfortunate as to have a fire will be thrown into a filthy Honduran prison, in the meanwhile having no means whatever to take charge of such of their property as might be saved from the fire.
As a simple mathematical calculation based on the insurance companies’ experience that with a certain number of “risks” there will always be a larger or smaller percentage of fires, this law before long will be enforced against some American citizen; and to such end I desire definite instructions from the Department as to what steps I shall take with the local authorities.
It must also be noted that the Americans who have investments in this country made them before this arbitrary law went into effect, when they had every reason to believe that the constitutional guaranty before mentioned gave them the same protection as enjoyed in the United States.
Although such large corporations as the United Fruit Company are reputed able to look after themselves, it may be mentioned that with a company owning the immense number of plantations, terminals, railroads, houses for employees, etc., as carried by that company, and all insured, were just an ordinary number of fires to occur the Honduras manager would have to spend the greater part of his time in prison proving himself innocent of being the instigator of them.
I assure you that the application of this law is a most serious matter, and that, until definite instructions are received in the matter, I am totally at a loss as to how to proceed on the arrest of an American citizen under its provisions; and that, as before explained, this arrest is sure to come in the ordinary course of events.
I have [etc.]