714.1515/872: Telegram

The Chargé in Honduras (Merrell) to the Secretary of State

52. My despatch No. 886 of May 10.16 The Minister for Foreign Affairs sent me last evening a lengthy confidential memorandum the substance of which follows:

1. The Government of Honduras recently protested that the Government of Guatemala has violated the status quo of 191817 by the [Page 947] undertaking of new agricultural works in the region of the Motagua and by the establishing of an auxiliary post at Chachahualia. Guatemala denied both these allegations and protested because Honduras is disposed to reestablish a police outpost at Chachahualia where it had established a military outpost in 1917 without protest from Guatemala. In 1928 a dispute took place over Chachahualia which ended in Guatemala’s recognition of Honduranean jurisdiction over that place and acceptance that Honduras establish a police outpost there. Honduras informed Guatemala last March it was an opportune moment again to establish an outpost there but has refrained from doing so because it was learned that Guatemala had regular forces there and it was desired to avoid a conflict.

The Honduranean Government now insists upon establishing a police outpost and constructing a government building at Chachahualia and “in proceeding to such acts is confident that it can count on the good offices of the Government of the United States of America in case there should be opposition or hostility on the part of Guatemala.”

2. In July 1928 Honduras protested against the construction of two Guatemalan public buildings at El Cinchado in the zone of the Motagua and the work was discontinued. It has recently been renewed, however, and fresh protests have been made, Honduras invoking Secretary Kellogg’s telegram of February 16, 1928, to the Honduranean Minister for Foreign Affairs.18 Guatemala maintains this construction does not violate the status quo (see despatch No. 886). Both countries claim El Cinchado and Chachahualia as integral parts of their territory.

The memorandum ends with the following statement:

“My Government hopes that the Government of the United States of America will be good enough to lend its good offices with a view to causing Guatemala to demolish quickly that part which it has completed of the house it is constructing in El Cinchado or the houses themselves in case they are already constructed, and that it suspend any other class of works in the zone of Motagua, which belongs unquestionably to Honduras, while a definite solution of the pending boundary question is being arrived at, maintaining without any alteration the status quo of 1918.

In submitting to your consideration the points of this memorandum in connection with which my Government desires the good offices of the Government of the United States of America, I have had in mind that the arbitration agreement solemnly accepted by Guatemala in the Central American Conference of 192319 in which the President of the United States was accepted as arbitrator is still in force.”

A copy of the memorandum and its annexes will be forwarded in the next pouch.20

[Page 948]

The President of the Republic has assured me that if the Department can find it convenient to reply in the near future Chachahualia will not be occupied until that time.

Repeated to Guatemala.

Merrell
  1. Not printed.
  2. See Foreign Relations, 1918, pp. 3234.
  3. Ibid., 1928, vol. i, p. 716.
  4. See Conference on Central American Affairs, Washington, December 4, 1922–February 7, 1923 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1923), p. 296.
  5. Not printed.