612.0023/90
The Secretary of State to the Mexican Ambassador (Téllez)
Excellency: I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that the Government of the United States has received with much satisfaction information indicating that the forces of Your Excellency’s Government have, as a result of the surrender of Nogales and Agua Prieta, reestablished control of ports in Mexico which were at one time temporarily in the hands of the insurrectionists, and that, according to your note of May 7, 1929, the regular Government custom houses in Nogales, Agua Prieta and Guaymas have been reopened.
In this connection and with relation to Your Excellency’s notes dated March 4 and 7, 1929, stating respectively that the closing of all frontier ports and seaports in the State of Sonora had been decreed, I have the honor to advise you, in a spirit of entire friendliness, that following the accepted tenets of international law, the Government of the United States considers that a foreign port in the hands of the enemies of the government to which such foreign port belongs, whether such enemies are foreign or domestic, is to be regarded as if the port were still open and in the hands of the regular government, and being so open, though in enemies hands, the intercourse and commerce of other nations is entitled to continue to flow through it without hindrance or molestation, so far as the regular government is concerned, except where ingress to or egress from such port is physically prevented, by blockade or otherwise, by that government.
Accept [etc.]