812.5200 Compañia Terrenos Y Ganados Rodrigo/26: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Mexico (Daniels)

287. Personal for the Ambassador. Department’s telegram 286, December 5, 7 p.m. Please telegraph immediately prospects for cancelation of dotation of Dickson’s lands. Please indicate also present status of the efforts you are making to have the property protected as “cattle lands”.

The following will serve as your instructions only in the event that it is necessary because of the time element to follow them. If prospects of cancelation are not favorable please state whether it may not be practicable immediately to obtain the courtesy of an extension for 30 days of the period allowed for fencing since the fifteen day period allowed (which expires morning of December 12) is said to be insufficient by at least 1 month. Meanwhile representations could be further pressed for cancelation. Under present time limit the Department understands it is not possible to complete fencing; the result of insistence upon present orders of agrarian authorities would probably be that many pure bred animals would escape into lands of agrarians, causing serious financial losses to Dickson and associates.

Should the Mexican Government, in the face of representations which you were instructed by the Department’s 286 to make, persist in the dotation it is hoped that at least the Government will arrange to make the dotation from the equivalent or better lands in the southeast corner of the property. While the theoretical value of the company’s lands per hectare may not be high the damages from either dotation would be considerable but somewhat less in the event the change to the southeast corner were made. This Government will strongly and immediately support a claim of the owners for losses and damages if any of the lands are expropriated and will expect prompt, adequate and effective compensation for the owners in fulfillment of the assurances referred to in the telegram.

The Department is in receipt of a further request from Senator Connally20 that all possible assistance be extended in this case.

Hull
  1. Senator Tom Connally of Texas.