740.00112A European War, 1939/36499a
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Guatemala (Long)
Sir: Reference is made to the Department’s airmail instruction no. 1550 of February 17, 1943.47 The Department feels it desirable to determine at as early a date as may be practicable the policy to be pursued during the present crop year with respect to the admission into the United States under the Guatemalan quota of coffee48 coming from Guatemalan plantations now on the Proclaimed List. As you will recall, our acceptance of enemy coffee in the past crop year, both within the quota and for purchase by the Army,49 was predicated upon the expressed intention of the Guatemalan Government to institute effective nationalization measures with respect to the plantations on which it was produced.
From the information now available to the Department, it appears that there will be sufficient free coffee available to fill the entire Guatemalan quota for the present crop year. Under these circumstances the Department and the other interested agencies of this Government believe that during this crop year there is no reason to make on behalf of enemy coffee any exception to Proclaimed List sanctions, such as those which have been made in the past two crop years. Your comments in this connection are requested.
The Department is not aware at the present time of any immediate probability that quotas will be raised or that the Army will be interested in purchasing Guatemalan non-quota Proclaimed List coffee as during the past two crop years. It is, however, possible that one or both of these contingencies may arise. For your confidential information the Department and the other pertinent agencies of this Government would not be disposed to permit such traffic in Proclaimed List coffee unless the Guatemalan authorities had taken measures specifically implementing the intention which they have already expressed of nationalizing enemy plantations. By this the Department does not mean to imply that no such traffic would be authorized until all enemy plantations had been nationalized, but rather that an effective start would have to be made in this process before authorization [Page 1154] was granted. The Department does not wish you spontaneously so to inform the Guatemalan authorities, but you are authorized to intimate the Department’s views to them, should a favorable opportunity arise, in any discussion which you may have with them regarding coffee matters.
You are requested to inform the Department if any important developments occur in this connection.
Very truly yours,
- Ibid., p. 346.↩
- For correspondence concerning coffee quotas in the American Republics, see pp. 134 ff.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. vi, pp. 354–361.↩