312.1113 Sustaita, Antonio/35
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Mexico
Sir: The receipt is acknowledged of your despatch No. 4810 of June 2, 1937, in relation to the possible payment of an indemnity by the Mexican Government on account of the inadequate sentence imposed upon Miguel Valero Rodríguez for the murder of Antonio Sustaita, an American citizen.
It appears from your despatch that the Mexican Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs was entirely unwilling to agree to any adjustment of this matter in advance of receiving the Embassy’s formal note containing the representations directed in the Department’s instruction No. 1517 of May 4, 1937, and that therefore following an interview with the Under Secretary in which that position was taken by him you delivered the note to him.
[Page 712]It is desired that the Embassy keep this matter before the attention of the Foreign Office with a view to the receipt at an early reasonable date of an answer to the note in question.
As amplifying statements contained in the Department’s instruction of May 4, reference may be made to the following statement contained in a communication from the Secretary of State to the Minister of the United States to Mexico, of August 15, 1873:
“The rule of the law of nations is that the Government which refuses to repair the damage committed by its citizens or subjects, to punish the guilty parties or to give them up for that purpose, may be regarded as virtually a sharer in the injury and as responsible therefor.”10
Reference may also be made to the discussion in Moore’s Digest of International Law (Volume VI, pages 792–799) of the cases of the murder in Turkish territory in May 1894 of Frank Lenz and of the murder in Honduras during the year 1888 of Charles W. Renton, both of whom were American citizens, and for the murder of whom and the subsequent miscarriage of justice resulting from failure to punish the murderers the Turkish and Honduran Governments, respectively, paid indemnity to the United States.
The views expressed by this Department in the indicated instruction to Mexico and in the course of the negotiations which resulted in the payment of indemnity for the murders of Messrs. Lenz and Renton are considered as correctly indicating the principles of international law which should govern in such cases, as was recognized by the Commissioners on the General Claims Commission, United States and Mexico, in the unanimous opinions they reached with regard to the cases enumerated in the Department’s instruction of May 4, 1937.
With regard to the statement contained in the last paragraph of your despatch to the effect that the Embassy’s records do not appear to show that the Mexican Government requested the payment of indemnity for the killing of Messrs. Gomez and Cortes Rubio, the Department informs you that a note received from the Mexican Embassy under date of November 20, 1931,11 contains the statement that the Mexican Government considered the responsibility of the United States in that case to be indisputable and that appropriate satisfaction therefor should be given.
Very truly yours,
- John Bassett Moore, A Digest of International Law, vol. vi, p. 655.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1931, vol. ii, p. 723.↩