File No. 812.00/16329.
The Acting Secretary of State to Special Agent Belt.
Washington, October 1, 1915—7 p.m.
This Government is in possession of an affidavit that on the night of September 23 a Carrancista officer crossed the Rio Grande at Los [Page 813] Pelaclos Crossing with a detachment of troops which had recently arrived from Matamoros and, landing on American soil, attacked a small detachment of American soldiers stationed at the crossing, killing two of them, one of them being first carried across and killed on the Mexican side. His ears and head were then cut off and his body thrown into the river. The horses and the arms captured from these soldiers were taken and held in the cuartel of the Carrancista soldiers a quarter of a mile distant from the crossing.
You are instructed to represent to the Carranza authorities that this matter is so serious, coupled as it is with many others of a similar nature, and in view of the fact that General Carranza claims to be in control of this entire district, that this Government can not view these outrages other than as acts in which the Carranza troops in that vicinity participate either because of instructions from headquarters or of their own volition. In either case the responsibility appears to rest upon General Carranza. A shipment of a carload of ammunition from Monterey to the small garrison of Matamoros on September 13, when the movement of supplies has invariably been from north to south, is a circumstance which has serious bearing on the case.
You will also say to the Carrancista authorities that this Government expects them immediately to issue orders which will definitely stop these reprehensible acts. Failure to issue effective orders will imply total lack of authority in a section long claimed to have been under the complete domination of the Carrancistas.