Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918
File No. 711.12/113
The Ambassador in Mexico ( Fletcher) to the Secretary of State
Sir: Continuing my strictly confidential despatch No. 1135 of June 19 last, I have the honor to enclose complete summarized clippings of articles appearing in the past week bearing on Mexican relations with the United States as evoked by the President’s speech and our note of April 2 in regard to the petroleum decree.
The substance of most of these articles had been telegraphed to the Department, which has no doubt noted the acrid tone of all of them. In the Department’s telegram No. 1196 of June 24, 4 p.m., the Department seems disposed to attribute this outburst in the press “to a desperate effort on the part of German sympathizers in the Government to discredit President Wilson’s friendly assurances.” But it is more than that. No doubt pro-German influences have contributed their efforts to bring this about, but President Carranza is the real deus ex machinâ. He is the Government of Mexico. The editorials of El Pueblo and El Universal reflect his sentiments and those of all Simon-pure revolutionists, and are directly inspired by him; those of El Democrata reflect the German influence.
The outstanding fact is that the Mexican Government did not receive cordially the message contained in the President’s recent speech to the Mexican journalists, and immediately set about to destroy its effect by the publication of my note of April 2 which this Government considers unjust, threatening, and injurious to its pride and prestige, and as interfering with the free enforcement of its fundamental law and the exercise of its sovereign rights, and in this uproar the question of simple justice and national good faith is entirely overlooked.
I have [etc.]
Summary of an article by Luis G. Urbina in “El Universal,” Mexico, D. F., June 19, 1918
MR. WILSON’S ADDRESS AND MR. FLETCHER’S NOTE
The preamble states that in his travels abroad, Mr. Urbina has seen, more clearly because at a distance, the greatness of his people and country, the geographical and political importance of Mexico in the Americas, and the great importance which the country’s relations with the United States have in Mexico’s future.
[Page 589]As regards Mr. Wilson’s address, he wondered if it marked a change in the policy of the United States toward Mexico; he could scarcely believe in a friendship which not only abstained from injuring Mexico, but desired to render a real service, and this in a period of difficulties between the two countries. However, the thought was encouraging and consoling.
However, no one failed to think that in Mr. Wilson there was a dual personality; the idealist, dreamer of liberty and justice, whose ideals were destroyed by the politician. Everyone says: There is a duality in Mr. Wilson, or even duplicity. His words are not in accord with the facts. The executive does the contrary to what the idealist says. His humanitarian eloquence has been constant and firm, but his warped and distorted policy is not humanitarian; it is selfish. There are those in Europe and America who see in the clear and easy oratory of Mr. Wilson a fine sense of malice. Is this a characteristic of the race? Secular observations would seem to indicate that it is. The fear is proverbial that in the clear current of a Saxon diplomatic note, there may be diluted a grain of perfidy.
With President Wilson the case is curious. His acts contradict his words, but without any apparent object, or preconceived plan. The result is always harmful, but a careful examination will show that the harm caused does not always benefit the American people. It is suspected that Mr. Wilson is extremely sensitive to outside influences.
As an example: A short time ago there did not exist a more ardent partisan of peace. To-day there is no one more energetically and blindly a propagandist of war; a more tremendous expounder of extermination is unknown.
Yesterday he said, “For humanity’s sake there should be neither victory nor defeat.” He backed it with calm reasoning.
To-day he says, “We Allies must conquer for the good of humanity.” And his energetic statement is based on a fervent sentimentalism.
The worst is that this sentimentalism, more than his former arguments sounds false.
His statement that the United States are the defenders of weak nations does not concur with the offenses committed with respect to Latin American nations.
These flagrant anomalies oblige one to suppose that Mr. Wilson has too much intelligence and too little force of character. Is he intellectual? A simpleton? If so, he is a danger for the American people.
He ridicules the claim to disinterestedness in the Allied cause.
We Mexicans would have no right to doubt Mr. Wilson’s protests of friendship, were it not for the fact that our memories recall incidents which tend to disprove those protests.
We believe the time has come to strengthen our ties with the United States, but this can only be done when facts confirm the words of friendship. It would be disagreeable to-morrow, in recalling Mr. Wilson’s address, to have to say with Hamlet: “Words! Words! Words!” These were my thoughts when I read the President’s statement.
But the newspapers of yesterday reserved a surprise for me: the publication of Ambassador Fletcher’s note.
Summary of an article by Luis G. Urbina in “El Universal” Mexico, D. F., June 26, 1918
AMBASSADOR FLETCHER’S NOTE AND PRESIDENT WILSON’S ADDRESS
This is the second of a promised series of articles on the subject.
The Ambassador’s note half conceals under polite diplomatic language the principles of grab and force, and while somewhat ambiguous, has a threatening aspect. The American Government has no legal grounds on which to sustain the note and its pretentions are inacceptable because founded on egotism and caprice. The contrast between the protests of a sincere friendship and the threats of an iniquitous violation give to the President’s words a strongly malignant character. Rereading the President’s speech, one finds in it also proud phrases of domination, echoes of the voice of the subjugator; in his reference to the elder brother role of the United States there is an imposition [Page 590] which is as energetic verbally as it is humiliating morally. The Spanish-American nations should take note of what Mr. Wilson says and what Mr. Fletcher writes. They are dissimilar but nevertheless have points of contact; the decision of a new imperialist country to dominate the continent. It preaches liberty and justice but prepares to exercise force. But yet there is a conflict between the speech and note. One excludes the other. There can be no agreement between a friendship which desires to do effective services and a note which treats of imposing an injustice and which threatens a territorial occupation. Mr. Wilson may be little sincere and Mr. Fletcher imperative, but the President for the honor of the nation should define his equivocal conduct and decide either to rectify his words of adhesion and friendship or withdraw the Ambassador’s note. Sincerity and humbug have appeared simultaneously in our international problems and one or the other must disappear. It is possible but not probable that President Wilson had no knowledge of the note of Mr. Fletcher and of what was going on in the State Department. Let us hope so as this would remove all difficulties and the withdrawal of the note would follow naturally and spontaneously. This could be the beginning of an open policy and of a frank and true friendship between the two countries.
Summary of an article from “El Pueblo” Mexico, D. F., June 24, 1918
THE MONROE DOCTRINE ANNULLED BY THE CARRANZA DOCTRINE
Mexico’s International Problem
This appears to be first of a series of articles on the subject, and mentions the series of editorials already published commenting on Ambassador Fletcher’s note on petroleum, in which it was stated: (1) The protection threatened is nothing more nor less than armed intervention, i. e., war; (2) that the Government should answer the note by energetically rejecting the protest, and denying to the United States the right for a single instant to protest against the country’s interior policy; and (3) the Ambassador’s note was shown in contrast to the President’s friendly words in his address to the Mexican journalists.
The old and the new foreign policy. Previously, Mexico’s foreign policy did not look ahead; it was stagnant, blindly following precedent. It was not energetic. Now, since Carranza took the reins of Government, all has changed; the new policy is vigorous and strong.
Mexico’s foreign relations. These have a double point of view: the American continent and Europe. The first has two problems: the United States and Latin America. The second (European relations) shows that in former times nothing was done to use them to make Mexico benefit thereby, excepting in the latter days of the Diaz régime when European immigration was being encouraged.
Mexico’s fundamental problem. It is that of absolute independence of the United States and complete equality, with a well-established friendship, with respect to Latin American republics.
Of this double problem, the most important feature, that which must receive our every thought and attention, that which should be a matter of tradition, line of conduct and plan of our Foreign Office, is absolute economical, political, diplomatic, interior and exterior independence from the United States.
Our relations and influence in America and Europe, as well as our prestige, all depend upon securing an absolute independence with respect to the United States. We shall never tire of repeating that this is our grave, our profound problem. We must never permit ourselves to be misguided in respect to our situation with regard to the United States. Our economic dependence on that country is most manifest; we depend on it for everything—capital, assistance in the development of industries, the maintenance of our lines of communication, machinery, and even articles of prime necessity.
We do not evade the inflexible social law of interdependence; but that interdependence must be based on mutual respect and that equality which Mexico should conquer and maintain at any cost.
Let us study, therefore, the fundamental problem: Mexico and the United States.
Summary of an article from “El Pueblo” Mexico, D. F., June 25, 1918
THE MONROE DOCTRINE ANNULLED BY THE CARRANZA DOCTRINE
Mexico and the United States
The relations between Mexico and the United States may be characterized as follows: Mexico has circled within an orbit in which American interests have been exclusively favored. Mexico’s attitude generally has been defensive against aggressions and threatening notes or unfriendly intentions. Mexico has been for the United States a country of conquest and investment; favorable for securing quick and large fortunes. General Diaz, in favoring foreign investment, overstepped the boundaries of justice and granted great privileges to Americans, which the revolution is endeavoring to combat so as to place them on a level with the privileges of natives.
American influence is the result of the complacency of the Diaz régime, and it is also the system practiced in other Latin American countries. It seeks predomination in the entire continent and more or less open intervention in interior affairs of the nations.
The Monroe Doctrine.—To sanction this policy, care has been taken to establish a sort of principle or program of international conduct. This is not the Monroe Doctrine, so-called; but the imperialistic tendencies which have grown out of and seek to justify that doctrine.
Monroe, on December 2, 1823, made certain statements which it was agreed should be known as the Monroe Doctrine. They contained two features: First, regarding the colonization of the American continent, and second, relative to Spain’s tendencies to reconquer her colonies. In conclusion the United States made themselves the protectors of all the American Continent.
As may be seen, the first two features no longer obtain. The concluding portion has been the subject of additions, amendments, and various interpretations, and has been so transformed that each President interprets it according to his personal ideas, so that in its present state it bears no resemblance to the original doctrine.
The doctrine’s present status.—Declaring themselves to be the ardent defenders of the doctrine, they have given to it a double form: First, a policy tending to secure a preponderance in the New World and a policy of intervention in the foreign and internal affairs of the Latin American countries, but always respecting their independence. This is the policy of hegemony. Secondly, the policy of the United States tending to establish its political and commercial superiority throughout the world, by means implying the limitation of the independence of other states. This is the imperialistic policy.
It quotes the words of Pradier-Foderé, who said that to prohibit the intervention of other governments is in itself intervention.
The doctrine has from the start proclaimed as a principle intervention in Latin American countries, and has been the pretext to cover such offenses as the interventions in Cuba, Panama and Santo Domingo; the annexation of Texas, the projects of annexation of Yucatan and Santo Domingo, and the war against Spain. When it does not cover acts of force, it serves for work of disorganization in the increasing prosperity of some Latin American countries. Admirable doctrine, it serves for everything, it stretches or shrinks, masks or unmasks itself, makes war or peace, distributes good and ill, stands for right or wields destruction. To it does the United States owe the distrust felt in all America; because of it will that country always fail in its attempts at friendship, because it will not be believed.
Interventionism or imperialism, or the desire for conquest, and hegemony at any cost, or greatest and only political, commercial and general influence, have been erected to the status of “doctrine.” Under the name of doctrine have ambitions and caprice been hidden.
The Latin American Republics never have and never will, accept such principles. They do not believe that the said doctrine is the safety valve of the continent; they all consider themselves to be of age, and able to take care of themselves.
The declaration of Monroe—the name we will hereafter give it—is destined to disappear, not on account of the German submarines, as an ignorant writer has stated, but because of the energetic, persevering and lucid labors of President Carranza. All the reproof to which the Monroe declarations have been [Page 592] subjected; all the horror and distrust it has inspired; all that instinct of defense manifested in the mechanical and close union of Latin America; all that desire for true liberty of action and intention; all have been embodied in that which from now on we can call the Carranza Doctrine; and that is a doctrine, because it teaches and shows the principles of universal brotherhood and of the practices of dignity and true independence, and it is destined to destroy the effects which were attributed to the other.
The Carranza Doctrine cancels the Monroe Doctrine.
Let us discuss the Carranza Doctrine.
Summary of an article from “El Pueblo” Mexico, D. F., June 26, 1918
THE MONROE DOCTRINE ANNULLED BY THE CARRANZA DOCTRINE
The Carranza Doctrine
The Carranza Doctrine has been formulated, or better said, is the result of an accumulation of declarations and practices which have been registered during the revolution, and which gave a new turn to Mexico’s external affairs. These declarations and practices are in reality a doctrine, because they serve as a lesson to public men, present and future, and may be attributed to President Carranza, because they were and are the fruit of his thoughts and ideas.
Mr. Carranza has established the essential principles thereof in diplomatic notes, speeches, etc. His acts are the best demonstration of his principles. It is these we desire to bring together into a harmonious system.
The elements of the doctrine.—These are two: the acts of the President, and his statements.
Carranza’s international conduct.—The policy which marks a new epoch in the annals of international law as practised by Mexico, is based on the following principal acts:
- 1.
- When the United States endeavored to represent European countries in making representations to Mexico on account of incidents arising from the revolution, Mr. Carranza rejected such representations, stating that they should come direct from the Government interested. This attitude angered all the Governments.
- 2.
- The Benton case is shown as an instance. The United States threatened intervention and rapidly concentrated troops on the border. Carranza was asked by many to submit to the exactions of the United States, but he refused, taking upon himself the responsibility, and confiding in the fact that he had justice and right on his side.
- 3.
- The Spanish Government endeavored to obtain certain guarantees and protection for El Desengaño mine through the United States. Mr. Carranza’s attitude was similar to the former.
These cases are a direct contrast to that of Bauch, an American citizen. The representations of the United States were given careful attention by Mr. Carranza.
These facts have a tremendous significance. Space does not allow of going into details, but it can be said that they are the most direct blow at the Monroe Doctrine as applied to Mexico and Latin America. European countries in asking that the United States make representations in their behalf, thereby recognized the Monroe Doctrine. To have accepted this principle would have been disastrous, as it would have admitted the loss of our liberty in foreign affairs. It is true that in these cases the United States alleged that Spain and England could not make representations direct because of the lack of representatives of those countries in Mexico. But Mexico replied that if they gave the United States express authority to act in their behalf, the representations would be accepted, but that this would not be done so long as such representations were based on the principles of the Monroe Doctrine. The First Chief rejected the protection never asked for and which he did not need, and obliged the European nations to deal with him directly.
Mexico again showed her immaculate dignity and noble pride in the A. R. C. Conferences when an endeavor was made to mix in Mexico’s internal affairs. Mexico rejected the attempt and the Niagara Conferences failed.
The same conduct was observed with regard to Vera Cruz and the various incidents in the North, not mentioned in detail for lack of space.
[Page 593]All the preceding cases are not fully known by the public, because they are of such a nature as to require a certain reserve and discretion, in order that the feelings of others may not be hurt. Now is the time, however, to give them full publicity and show the policy which with such difficulty has been developed, and what has been gained by it for the honor of the country and the respect it should inspire.