Office of the Historian

740.00112A E.W. 1939/7–1044: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Guatemala (Long)

Washington, July 14, 1944—6 p.m.

408. Treasury Department has approved, under Executive Order no. 8389, as amended,70 the importation into the United States and other dealing in coffee of the current year’s crop produced on Proclaimed List properties. This approval is based on Decrees no. 3115 and no. 3119, and on the assurances received from the Guatemalan Government, as reported in your telegrams no. 492 of July 1071 and 493 of July 11, that it will give full effect to the provisions thereof and that any proceeds of the sale of the coffee or the transfers of the property will be blocked during the war.

The procedure with regard to the licensing and issuance of consular invoices will be the same as outlined in Department’s airgram no. 436 of May 17, 194372 with regard to the importation of last year’s crop. You are accordingly authorized to notify all United States persons and firms that, notwithstanding General Ruling No. 11,73 such coffee can now be dealt in and imported into this country without the necessity of obtaining specific Treasury licenses, under Executive Order No. 8389, as amended, and to notify all local persons and firms that they will not be recommended for inclusion on the List if they participate in the purchase of such coffee for shipment to the United States.

Hull

[A purchase contract for the entire block of Proclaimed List coffee was signed on July 17 by representatives of Guatemala’s Departamento de Fincas Urbanas de la Nación and of “Agendas Unidas”, S.A. Guatemala, an exporting firm and subsidiary of Otis McAlister and Co. of San Francisco, California. Details of this transaction are given in despatch No. 1334, dated July 21, from the Ambassador in Guatemala, not printed (740.00112A European War 1939/7–2144).]

  1. 5 Federal Register 1400, 2667; 6 Federal Register 2897; 7 Federal Register 5205.↩
  2. Not printed.↩
  3. Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. vi, p. 356.↩
  4. For text of Ruling, see Treasury Department, “General Ruling No. 11 Under Executive Order 8389, as Amended, and Regulations Issued Pursuant Thereto Relating to Foreign Funds Control,” Documents Relating to Wartime Financial and Property Controls of the United States Government (Washington, June 30, 1942).↩