816.01 Caffery Mission/11: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in El Salvador (Curtis)
75. For Caffery. Your 124, December 23, 6 p.m., and 127, December 28, noon. The Department has been giving careful consideration to the question of whether, if Castaneda were appointed First Designate by the Congress, he would be eligible for recognition following the resignation of Martínez. While the Department desires to take the most scrupulous care not to assume a position which would result in refusing recognition to anyone who might, under any reasonable interpretation of the Treaty of 1923, claim recognition as President of Salvador, it nevertheless cannot escape the conclusion that if General Castaneda were elected Designate by the Congress and this election should take place within 6 months of the time in which he had held the office of Minister of Interior, he would clearly be debarred from recognition under Article 2 of the Treaty.
The Department recognizes that an argument could be put forward that Castaneda was not barred because of the phrase “high military command” in subparagraph 2 of Article II, inasmuch as the rank of Brigadier General might conceivably be held as not being necessarily a “high military command”. The Department also assumes [Page 210] that Castaneda was not implicated in the revolution and that while he brought his cadets to the revolutionary headquarters he did so under duress and only after two rounds of machine gun shots had been fired at the military school.
It might be thought that the argument could be advanced that the “appointment” of a First Designate was not an “election” in the sense of Article II. The Constitution in fact does appear to make a verbal distinction between the “appointment” of designates by the Congress and the “election” of President and Vice President by popular vote. The Department, however, after thorough consideration, feels that to adopt this argument would be to give sanction to a mere play on words and that there can be no reasonable doubt that the appointment of designates by Congress is in fact an election coming within the purview of the provisions of Article II, and that Castaneda would be debarred from recognition due to the fact that he had held the office of Secretary of the Interior within the 6 months preceding such election.
The Department would be glad to have you, if you perceive no objection, explain the foregoing fully to Martínez and Castaneda, impressing upon them the care with which the Department has examined into the matter and our desire to fulfill scrupulously the obligations incumbent upon us in view of our decision made in 1923 to be guided by the Treaty in our relations with the Central American States. We have no animus against any individual and our fervent hope is that someone may legally assume the presidency of Salvador who can be recognized consistently with the provisions of the 1923 Treaty. There is of course absolutely no personal feeling against Castaneda who, if he resigned now to become eligible for election as designate 6 months later, could apparently then be recognized if the incumbent of the Presidency in the interim—who might be the present third designate or anyone else not debarred by the treaty—should then resign that office.