812.52/1951
The Ambassador in Mexico (Daniels) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 26.]
Sir: I have the honor to inform the Department that I called upon Mr. Ceniceros, the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, yesterday [Page 781] evening and again discussed with him the agrarian question. I first showed him the letter recently received from the Agrarian Department, a copy of which was forwarded to the Department in my despatch No. 3066 of November 21, 1935,32 in which it was stated (in translation) that “Since no regulations now exist providing indemnization for ejidal expropriations, it is not now possible to give you the information which you request concerning the compensation which may be received by Mr. J. A. Cunningham for the lands expropriated from his ranch”.
As soon as Mr. Ceniceros had read this letter, I handed him a translation of the paragraph of President Cárdenas’ interview as reported in the late edition of the New York Times of October 24, in which President Cárdenas is reported as having stated: “I wish emphatically to repeat these assurances and at the same time to deny roundly that my Government has any intention of pursuing a policy of property confiscation, either of agricultural or industrial properties. The land taken in connection with the Government’s land parcelling program today is being paid a just valuation in Government bonds, which the present condition of the budget and national treasury render entirely sound, especially in view of the declared intention of my Government to meet the indebtedness”.
I then asked Mr. Ceniceros how he could reconcile these two statements.
Mr. Ceniceros replied that he fully realized the seriousness of the agrarian problem as it affected American citizens and that President Cárdenas was giving the matter careful thought. He said that Ambassador Nájera, recently arrived from Washington, had already discussed the subject with President Cárdenas and had emphasized what he himself had already told the President, that the American Government viewed the continued expropriation of lands from American citizens without compensation with great concern, and urged that a satisfactory solution to this problem be found as soon as possible.
Mr. Ceniceros told me that the question of compensating American citizens for lands taken from them under the agrarian laws had been removed from the Agrarian Department by President Càrdenas, who had instructed himself and Mr. Suárez, Minister of Hacienda, to study the question and to draw up a plan that would be satisfactory to the American Government. Mr. Ceniceros very earnestly asked that the American Government refrain from pressing the matter further until after the New Year, which after all was only five weeks off, because he strongly believed that by that time, early in the new year, President Cárdenas would be ready to make a proposal which he believed would be satisfactory to the American Government.
[Page 782]Referring to the letter from the Agrarian Department and to the President’s interview as reported in the New York Times…Mr. Ceniceros…asked that we accept President Cárdenas’ statement rather than the letter from the Agrarian Department as reflecting the true policy of the Mexican Government.
In view of this conversation with the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which he spoke with evident sincerity and much earnestness, I believe that it would be as well for us to refrain from making further representations on this subject until after the New Year, so as to enable President Cárdenas to draw up his plan to cover the troublesome question as a whole and not on the basis of a few individual cases such as we now have pending with the Foreign Office.
Respectfully yours,
- Not printed.↩