312.0022/1: Telegram

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

287. Your 315, September 7, 6 p.m. The Department feels there is a clear distinction which you should draw between your duties as American Ambassador and your functions as Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

You may say to your Colombian colleague that convocation by you of the proposed meeting or attendance by any representative of the American Embassy would in all probability give rise to a feeling that this Government contemplated some change in its well-established and well-known policy in the matter of asylum. Moreover, either action could readily involve the Embassy and perhaps the Department in the controversial question of whether the Mexican domestic [Page 1068] political situation is acute and the related question of whether the Mexican Government is exercising repression on the Almazanistas. Accordingly, the Department endorses the position it understands you desire to take of declining to call the meeting and of non-participation therein.

You may desire to say also that while in most matters the United States sees eye to eye with the other American Republics, it is believed our traditional views on this subject are so well known that our inability to cooperate in this instance will be fully understood.

If you so desire, you are authorized to absent yourself from Mexico City for a few days. The Acting Dean, who it appears is the Cuban Ambassador, (or at any rate a representative of one of the other American Republics which perhaps entertains views more in consonance with the Colombian attitude) could then give consideration to the matter of a meeting.6

Hull
  1. The Colombian Minister in Mexico did not press the issue further with Ambassador Daniels but dealt directly with the Mexican Government.