714.44A15/41

The Minister in Guatemala (Des Portes) to the Secretary of State

No. 640

Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith the text, together with a translation thereof, of a memorandum relative to the pending dispute between Guatemala and Great Britain over the extension and boundaries of British Honduras. This memorandum was prepared by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of this Government in connection with a request which President Ubico made of me during the course of an interview which I had with him recently that I ask the Department to intervene in the matter to the extent of discussing it, in the light of the diplomatic and political relations of the United States with Great Britain at the time of and leading up to the signing of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty in 1850,4 with the British Ambassador in Washington. President Ubico appears to be doing everything in his power to keep the question alive and in the public eye, and the present request is doubtless in conformity with his other activities along the same line. I assured him that I would be glad to transmit his request, but added that I was not certain that the Department would find it possible to accede to it at this time.

In discussing the controversy with me President Ubico stated that he would gladly accept settlement of it on the basis of England’s relinquishment of the territory not included in the original usufructuary grant of the King of Spain.5 He has no desire to acquire sovereignty over Belize itself, nor would he, if the foregoing concession were made, demand any indemnity for England’s non-compliance with Article VII of the Treaty of 1859.

Respectfully yours,

Fay Allen Des Portes
[Enclosure—Translation5a]

The Guatemalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the American Legation

Memorandum Relative to the Question of Belize Pending Between Guatemala and Great Britain

Sir Henry Bulwer, English Minister in Washington, before effecting the exchange of ratifications of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, [Page 205] signed the 19th of April, 1850, declared on the 29th of June that the clauses of the Treaty, as understood by the Government of Her Majesty, were not applicable to the establishment of Belize and that with that explicit declaration the ratifications would be exchanged. Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, in a letter of July 4 following, agreed to the reservation of the English Minister, but at the same time he declined to accept or to reject the British title to Belize.6

Bassett Moore, in his Digest of International Law (Vol. III, page 130 et sequ.), gives the complete and detailed history of the diplomatic controversy afterwards arising between the United States and England relative to the application of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, the provisions of whose Article I prohibits England from maintaining any occupation in Central American territory.

Although England claimed to have taken possession of Belize during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1796, the Government of Washington maintained and proved that numerous acts of the British Government had exceeded (aumentado) the force of the Treaty of Peace of Amiens (1802),7 in accordance with Article III of which, and with the exception of the Island of Trinidad, Great Britain renounced any Spanish territory occupied by its forces during the war. “It is, however, distinctly to be understood, that the Government of the United States acknowledge no claim of Great Britain within Belize, except the temporary ‘liberty of making use of the wood of different kinds, the fruits and other produce in their natural state’, fully recognizing that the former Spanish sovereignty over the country belongs either to Guatemala or Mexico”, Mr. Buchanan, Minister of the United States, advised Lord Clarendon on July 22, 1854.8

The controversy was prolonged until the year 1857, when the Government of Great Britain declared on October 19 its resolution to send a representative to Central America to arrange in separate treaties with the respective Governments of these Republics the matters on which the United States and England had not come to agreement;9 the Government of the United States received that announcement with satisfaction and declared “in reference to the extended boundary claimed by Great Britain for the Belize (to which it had ever objected), that he could make no absolute engagement in this matter; but he would say this much, ‘that if the Bay Islands were fairly and handsomely evacuated, such a measure would have a great effect with him,10 [Page 206] and with the American people, in regard to the settlement of the other points at issue.’”11

The instructions of the English envoy to Central America, as communicated to the Government of the United States on December 5, 1857, included three points:12

1.
The return by England of the Bay Islands to Honduras;
2.
Recognition of Nicaraguan sovereignty over the Mosquito Coast.
3.
“The regulation of the frontier of British Honduras was to be effected by negotiation with the Government of Guatemala. Her Majesty’s Government trusted to obtain from that Republic a recognition of limits ‘which, if we may judge from previous communications on the subject, may be accepted in a spirit of conciliation, if not with absolute approval, by the President.’”

The Plenipotentiary of Great Britain presented himself before the Government of Guatemala, the situation of which with regard to Belize resulted very disadvantageously as a consequence of the Dallas-Clarendon Treaty (London, 1854)13 which, without any participation, nor scarcely official knowledge of the Government of Guatemala, contained an agreement of the Governments of the United States and England relative to the establishment of the frontiers of Belize as and how claimed by Great Britain to the River Sarstun, much more than 100 English miles south of the Sibún, the limit of the usufruct concession of 1786. If England was lacking in title to the territorial possession of the area included between the Rivers Hondo and Sibún, it was able to invoke even less authority for legitimate pretentions to territories situated to the south and to the west of the conditional concession of the King of Spain: the argument of the armed conquest during the war of 1796 remains nullified by the copious and interesting British documentation of the Archives of British Honduras (three volumes, London, 1931/35), compiled by the ex-Governor of Belize, Sir John Alder Burdon.

The unfavorable situation in which it was placed by the Dallas-Clarendon treaty, and the serious conditions resulting from prolonged civil war and political and economic difficulties compelled the Government of Guatemala to resign itself to accepting the consequences of that treaty in which two great powers agreed—even though only in principle—that Belize belonged to England with the boundaries which the latter claimed.

[Page 207]

As in every way England saw itself in the necessity of exhibiting in Washington legitimate title to the possession of Belize, and only Guatemala was able to grant it; the latter, despite the Dallas–Clarendon Treaty which converted into an accomplished fact and recognized the English usurpation, demanded as a condition for the acceptance of the limits of the frontiers agreed to in London the corresponding compensatory clause.

But England could not disclose, in the treaty which precisely it had to invoke in Washington, that in 1859 it had flagrantly violated the Clayton–Bulwer treaty, by virtue of which it had promised the United States, in 1850, not to occupy, fortify, colonize, assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast nor any part of Central America.14 In consequence, it obliged Guatemala not to mention the cession of the territory of Belize, and the Convention of 1859 was called simply the Boundaries of Belize. The greatest ambiguity possible was given to the compensatory clause, Article VII, which says literally:

“Article VII. With the object of practically carrying out the views set forth in the preamble of the present Convention, for improving and perpetuating the friendly relations which at present so happily exist between the two High Contracting Parties, they mutually agree conjointly to use their best efforts, by taking adequate means for establishing the easiest communication either by means of a cart-road or employing the rivers, or both united, according to the opinion of the surveying engineers, between the fittest place on the Atlantic Coast, near the settlement of Belize, and the capital of Guatemala; whereby the commerce of England on the one hand, and the material prosperity of the Republic on the other, cannot fail to be sensibly increased; at the same time that the limits of the two countries being now clearly defined, all further encroachments by either party on the territory of the other will be effectually checked and prevented for the future.”

It was England which advanced into Guatemalan territory and, on agreeing on limits of such advances, the Government of Guatemala did nothing but to cede sovereignty: why the English promise to construct a highway to the end of “augmenting considerably the material prosperity of the Republic”, if not in compensation for that territorial cession?

But England, the proposition of obtaining a legitimate title to the object of the Dallas–Clarendon Treaty being attained, rejected the obligation of the compensatory clause: from the middle of the 19th century, and with incidents many times offensive to the Republic, the latter maintained the reserve of its rights and claim for complete compliance with the Convention of 1859. Finally, in 1937 and confronted [Page 208] with the force of justice which assists the Republic, the English Government accepted the proposal to arbitrate the question, but it refused to accept the President of the United States as arbitrator on the pretext that the matter is solely concerned with the mere legal interpretation, contrary to the opinion of Guatemala which sustains the thesis of the material and intangible damages which, sustained during fifty years because of the lack of the highway agreed upon—Guatemala inaugurated its Atlantic railway in 1908—, the non-compliance of England has caused it.

The English Legation has communicated to the Government of Guatemala that its Government, in view of not being able to come to an agreement on the question, definitely declined compliance with Article VII of the Convention of Limits with Belize, and at the same time holds Guatemala responsible for the consequences of not accepting on its part the limits unilaterally laid out by English engineers.

In view of the attitude of Great Britain, Guatemala holds the following point of view: the non-compliance with Article VII of the Treaty, the compensatory clause, obligation of England, invalidates the other articles of the treaty, which only constitutes a sacrifice for Guatemala.

The Convention of Limits—which was that of cession—with Belize, invalidated by England, the situation of the actual colony returns to the status quo ante, that is to say, England has as a usufruct concession the area included between the Rivers Hondo and Sibún, and unlawfully holds (detenta) through successive usurpations from the Republic of Guatemala all of the territory situated at the south of the River Sibún and to the west of the concession of the King of Spain.

The situation unhappily created by one of the powers, England, which proclaims the sanctity of international treaties, cannot be other. And Guatemala, which traditionally has complied faithfully with all of its contractual agreements with other nations, solemnly invokes the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty which, the Convention of 1859 being nullified, is the only (treaty) legitimately invokable to settle the question of Belize.

Guatemala, July 8, 1938.

  1. Hunter Miller (ed.), Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 5, p. 671.
  2. This grant was made by the convention between Great Britain and Spain relative to America, signed at London, July 14, 1786; for text of the convention, see British and Foreign State Papers, vol. i, p. 654.
  3. Translation revised by the editors.
  4. For the British declaration of June 29 and the American note of July 4, 1850, see Miller, Treaties, vol. 5, pp. 681 and 682.
  5. Definitive Treaty of Peace between Great Britain on the one part and France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic on the other, signed at Amiens March 25 and 27, 1802, Martens, Supplement au recueil des principaux traités (Gottingue, 1802–1808), vol. ii, p. 563.
  6. Moore, Digest, vol. iii, p. 139; original English text restored.
  7. Ibid., p. 168.
  8. i. e., the President of the United States.
  9. Moore, Digest, vol. iii, p. 169; original English text restored.
  10. This information was communicated by Lord Napier to Secretary of State Lewis Cass in a note dated November 30, 1857, ibid.; original English text restored in point 3.
  11. The Dallas–Clarendon treaty between the United States and Great Britain, signed at London, October 17, 1856, failed to go into force; see Miller, Treaties, vol. 5, p. 793.
  12. See Miner, Treaties, vol. 5, p. 672; original English text restored.