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  4. Document 599

815.0145/2

The Minister in Honduras ( Erwin ) to the Secretary of State

No. 79
Tegucigalpa , November 4, 1937.
[Received November 12.]

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the Department’s Instruction No. 17 of October 19, 1937, file No. 815.0145/1, regarding the provision of Article 153 of the Honduran Constitution of 1936, relative to territorial waters, and to enclose herewith a copy of a Note forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today, reserving all rights on the part of the United States Government with regard to territorial waters extending beyond the usually accepted three-mile limit.

Respectfully yours,

John D. Erwin
[Page 597]
[Enclosure]

The American Minister ( Erwin ) to the Honduran Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs ( Laínez Espinosa )3

No. 16
Tegucigalpa , November 4, 1937.

Excellency: I have the honor to refer to Article 153 of the Honduran Constitution of 1936, which reads in part as follows:

“To the State appertains the full dominion, inalienable and inprescriptible, over the waters of the territorial seas to a distance of twelve kilometers from the lowest tide mark …”4

In this connection, I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that I have received instructions from the Acting Secretary of State of my Government to the effect that the Government of the United States of America reserves all rights of whatever nature with regard to any effects upon American interests from an enforcement of this Constitutional provision so far as it asserts that the territorial waters of Honduras extend beyond the three-mile limit, namely, a distance of three nautical miles from the line of mean low water.

Accept [etc.]

John D. Erwin
  1. In despatch No. 100, November 22, 1937, the Minister in Honduras transmitted the reply of the Honduran Foreign Office, dated November 19. The reply merely acknowledged the receipt of this note. (815.0145/4)↩
  2. Original in Spanish; translation supplied by the editors.↩