Mexico’s Negative Press in the United States – Part II

Armando Miguélez

In our last week´s Hispanic Heritage we presented the background of a 1919 complete letter that openly denounced the unfair way that Mexico was portrayed in publications owned by Hearst and his circle. We showed how Mexico was a country like any other: a country that faced the same problems as any other nation, and that strove, as did other nations, to ensure its citizens’ happiness and well-being.

Here is the translation into English of the entire letter written originally in Spanish by Samuel R. Riojas, a member of the Hispanic-American Society of Los Angeles, to Woodrow Wilson and to the members of Congress in response to the American government’s justification of the frequent U.S. interventions into Mexico and Latin America.

Riojas shows how Mexico wants American friendship and how America will appreciate Mexico´s commercial exchange and friendship as well.

An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America and to the Members of Congress
(Published in the daily “La Prensa”, Los Angeles, California, July 26th, 1919)

That there is a well organized propaganda in the United States endeavouring to create and crystallize American public opinion against Mexico, and particularly against the existent government Administration, is, not only an apparent fact, but a matter capable of substantiation.

The purpose of this movement is purely financial; and such a project is being used to foment internal strife in the Republic of Mexico to make it appear that no stable government exists, and that the Mexican people have not reached such a stage of civil development that they are entitled to a place in the realm of international diplomacy. While it must be admitted that such a scheme is repugnant to all moral, and is disturbing to the world equanimity, and harmony so devoutly desired in this hour of mournful international drama, the most calamitous aspect of the affair is that the leaders of the world´s great commercial and financial destinies have let their insatiate greed stupefy them to such an extent that they contemptuously violate the national hospitality of Mexico, which has enabled them to rapidly accumulate as private possessions the potential resources of a country which they now seek to humiliate and defy.

It is not at all remarkable that a world so recently incarnated with a baptism of sanguinary hate, engendered by vaunting avarice and vaulting ambitions, should be slow to comprehend that the same agencies which cultivated and nurtured that harvest of woe which has just been reaped could be audacious enough to so soon plant de seeds for another sombre autumn.

Like every other country on earth, Mexico has its domestic problems. It is eminently proper, and, indeed absolutely necessary, that Mexico be permitted to find a solution of these perplexities in a manner best comporting with the ideas, convictions, and temperament of its own people.

Every stable political organization is necessarily the outgrowth of the thought and experience of the people creating it. Government exotics have been the cause of most of the world´s international troubles. It has been the Irelands, the Polands, the British Colonials, the Koreans, the “zones of influence”, the Alsace-Lorraines, and the Balkans Sovereignties which have been the primal cause of all the strife; for every self respecting tribe and people resent the hypocrisy of any condescending paternalism.

Seven hundred and thirty years of British rule and interference in Ireland has accomplished nothing more than illuminating history with the story of centuries of tragedy; all giving proof that, while there are more Saxons than Celtics, the Celt will not permit his pride and self-respect to yield to the conquest of superior numerical strength. The American Colonies, mostly Scotch, French, Irish, Spanish and Dutch, lived under the paternalism of England until that same psychology could develop a virile force capable of assertion; and a century brought an hour when the British found need of the friendship which she had in times agone regarded so slightly.

These examples could be multiplied but enough has been stated to indicate that every nation and every people will, of necessity, shape its welfare; and that all outside attempts to interfere are, in no broad sense, helpful.

Mexico is fortunately blessed with a most unusual treasure of wealth, and is, therefore, the unfortunate victim of world avarice. Her preponderating prestige in things material have, to a great extent, obstructed the attainment by the people of a high degree of that ethical refinement politely termed ,”civilization” in a measure commensurate with some of the older communities of the world. But, if there be any blame for the alleged remissness, the reproach must lie against those who boast these finer pretensess; for they have attempted to take Mexico´s oil and gold without even the cheap recompense of the graceful bestowment of their exuberant cultured charms.

The Republic of Mexico has cordially received into its hospitality and into the enjoyment of its wonderful commercial opportunities the citizenry of other sovereignties; and has accorded them access to her bounty of riches without exacting of them the duties and obligations of her own nationals. With great patience and excessive tolerance, the Republic of México has long submitted to the exploitation of her natural resources and national domain by those not “to the manor born”; all the time feeling that the integrity of her institutions and her rights of sovereignty were sufficiently guarded by the comity of nations and the treaty pacts existing between the Republic and other Powers, whose nationals might find domicile or hospice within her borders.

It was never surmised nor contemplated that the hour should ever arrive when those who had come from other countries in search of material gain, and had sought and obtained the benefits the burdens of citizenship,, and who, in all law and conscience , knew of, and accepted, the limitations which every government must place upon its vital belongings as a protection to its sovereign existence, could ever find countenance or consort with the governments from which they came to do violence or hurt to us in return for our hospitality.

Some years ago, foreigners, attracted by the prospect of riches, acquired holdings in the Republic of Mexico; some being held in fee simple, and others, by right of “denouncement” or “location” under mineral laws.

The acquisition of property rights in all countries is subject to such limitations as will in no way imperil the very sovereignty under whose authority the property right exists, by whose grant it was obtained, and through whose consent its continued enjoyment is dependent. Under the law of England it is held:

“The allodial property no subject in England has; it being a received, and now inalienable principle of law, that all the lands in England are holden mediately or immediately of the King; that is, it is not purely and simply the property of him who holds it in fee”

If, thorough the purchase of a landed estate in the United States by a foreigner, the government of the United States would lose any part of its sovereignty over the terrain thus passing into the possessary control and use of this foreigner, the United States would already have passed largely under foreign control .The recognition of such a principle under international law would culminate in a world upheaval.

Webster, the great American lexicographer, defines sovereignty as “the power that determinates and administers the government of a State in its final analysis”

The learned Blackstone asserts:” Sovereignty and Legislature are convertible terms; one cannot subsist without the other”

It is self-evident that, if a government exists, it is inherently invested with sovereign powers; and its powers within its domain are essentially supreme. Its organic and statutory laws are its own creature; and all things relating to civil rights, property interests, internal policies and national welfare, are subject to its supreme jurisdiction. Al natives, naturalized citizens, and all transient and permanent residents within its borders are bound by the rules of its organism. Property acquired by citizens or aliens are require, held, conveyed, devised, inherited, taxed, commandeered, o condemned by the legal processes of its courts and legislature, and citizen and alien alike must yield submissively to the mutations of its constitutional and statute laws.

In the case of Low vs Routledge, His Brittanic Majesty´s Courts held that:

“An alien coming to Canada could acquire only such rights as were given by the law of Canada”

Sir G.J. Turner, L.J., delivering the judgment of the Court, said:

“Every alien coming into British Colony becomes temporally bound by, subject to, and entitled to the benefit of the laws which affect all British subjects. He has rights both within and beyond the Colony into which he comes .As to his rights within the Colony, he may well be bound by its laws”

In the case of Adam and Donnegani vs. Donnegani, His Majesty´s Court again held as the rights of British subjects in its own colonies:

“Rights and liabilities incidental to such status, must be determined by the law of the colonies”

Mexico has had recognition through treaty compacts and international comities as a Sovereign since 1821.Its government is now functioning and has had comparative orderly administration during the six years of the world upheaval, when thrones tottered, democracies rocked, and anarchy tore the vitals of the greatest nations of the earth.

It is true de banditry, financed and encouraged by extra-territorial agencies, has practised the arts of rapine and murder. For this the Republic has been scandalized as “an outlaw among nations”. During this period a more powerful banditry has sought to disembowel her my thrusts at her vital resources; attacks have been made upon her finance by foreign permits to counterfeit her currency, accompanied with attempts to assassinate her credit on the exchanges of the world. Intrigue has nurtured a paid press of propaganda * to pared the crimes of hired murderers as illustrative of the character of fifteen million people, whose trade and hospitality have commended them to the good graces of the world for decades. The attempt is being made by few, who have never been residents or citizens of Mexico, but have grown rich from her America fly at the throat of Mexico and render her helpless against organized loot.

Americans and Mexicans are friends and neighbors;  their social and commercial intercourse has been, and is now, most cordial.

English subjects and her American agents bought vast areas of oil lands in Mexico. England openly acknowledges that the British Empire, as a Government, now owns these.

This is contrary to the historic Monroe Doctrine. There will be a great naval base at America´s doors, and the oil fuel stores on the Atlantics side of the Continent will all be in English hands. Within the week she just bought the last remaining producing oil properties of California. To the north of you is English Canada; to the east of you are the English Empire, the English Bahamas and Bermudas; to the south of you are English Jamaica, British Honduras, the fortified Corn Islands near the mouth of the Panama Canal; the English owned Tehuantepec Railway, and ample English owned oil stores in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela; to the west of you, England´s ally, Japan.

If Mexico is invaded to deliver her oil bearing territory to England, enabling her to establish a great naval base with its own oil supply at your doors, and also a British Dominion inside of Mexico, how will all the Central American y South American Republics estimate your Monroe Doctrine?

Mexico wants American friendship; America will appreciate Mexico´s commercial tribute from the rich granaries, her veins of metallic wealth, her textile and fibrous products.

America had her Jessie James, her Daltons, her Younger Brothers, her civil war, her lynchings, her Apache uprisings, her Haymarket and Homestead Riots, and now her Bolsheviki ; but no one suggested that United States was “a international outlaw” or that she needed a foreign “mandatory” or a League of Nations to render it a victim to the bleeding processes of financial banditry or make its people slaves to international political exploiters.

Mexico needs rest from baneful external influences, and an opportunity to work out, in a manner adapted to her people, her own civil salvation.

It is an hour for a most cordial and Christian interchanges of greetings between the people of our two friendly Republics, and from it will grow blessings to both.

We need Peace, not a Sword!

Samuel R. Riojas – a member of the “Asociación Hispano-Americana”

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