812.6363/778
The Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association of Producers of Petroleum in Mexico ( Swain ) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received January 4, 1921.]
Sir: Referring to the communication of the Huasteca Petroleum Company of December 24th last and to my communication of December 27th on behalf of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey),50 both giving facts as to the issuance by the Mexican Government of [Page 226] “denouncement titles” in favor of Mexican denouncers of eight (8) tracts of land owned or leased by American companies, as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association of Producers of Petroleum in Mexico, I beg to call your attention to the gravity of the situation which has arisen by virtue of this first grant to Mexicans of American property rights under the denouncement system put into force by the Carranza decrees and against which your department has protested.
There are at present over 1100 denouncements, that is, petitions for grants of subsoil rights in Mexico, over two hundred of which ask for rights in lands of Americans and American companies. We feel sure that if prompt steps are not taken, urgently to bring to the attention of the Mexican Government the seriousness of this granting to Mexican citizens of properties of American[s], the Mexican authorities will be encouraged to grant similar denouncement titles to the remaining Mexican petitioners for grant of subsoil rights in the remaining American properties denounced, thereby making any settlement of the problem infinitely more difficult.
I have [etc.]
- Neither printed.↩