Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1929, Volume II

837.00/2730

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Cuba (Judah)

Washington, April 23, 1929.

No. 359

Sir: The Department has received your despatch No. 615 of March 21, 1929,¹² wherein you called attention to the provisions of a bill which has been introduced in the Lower House of the Cuban Legislature for the amendment of Article 134 of the Penal Code so that it shall provide, among other things, that

• “(a) Any Cuban who induces a foreign power to declare war on Cuba or who negotiates with such a power to that end shall be punished with life imprisonment or death, if war is declared, otherwise with a long term or life imprisonment.
• “(b) Any Cuban who seeks the intervention or interference of a foreign power in the internal or external development of the national life shall likewise incur the penalty of a long term or life imprisonment.
• “(c) The Cuban who, with the same purpose, carries on propaganda, oral, written or of any other kind, shall be subjected to a long term of imprisonment.”

It can hardly be doubted that the above quoted provisions under (b) and (c) are designed to render it more difficult for the United States to exercise the rights of intervention which it has in the affairs of Cuba and which the Cuban Government has recognized by the incorporation of the Platt Amendment in the Constitution of Cuba and the Treaty of Relations with the United States of 1903.¹³

The enactment of the proposed bill would be justly regarded by the world as a measure of affront by Cuba directed at the United States and of attempted repudiation by Cuba of the consent heretofore given to the exercise of the rights of intervention inhering in the United States.

It must be obvious that to fulfill its duties in the premises, the Government of the United States must have free access to the sources of information and naturally citizens of Cuba constitute most important sources upon such questions as whether Cuban independence is threatened; whether the Government of Cuba, at a given time, is adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty, and whether the Government of Cuba is properly discharging the obligations imposed by the Treaty of Paris¹⁴ on the United States and thereafter assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba.

In this relation it is not too much to say that the enactment of the proposed legislation would be strong evidence that the existing government is not appropriately protecting individual liberty.

In view of the foregoing, the Department desires you to seek an early interview with President Machado and say to him that, while you do not suppose that there is any likelihood of the enactment of the proposed legislation, yet, out of abundance of caution you desired to point out to him the very unfortunate impression which its enactment would create in the United States.

The Department does not desire you to leave any written memorandum with the President, but you may orally present to him the foregoing considerations and incidentally point out, unless you perceive serious objection to making such statements, that the rights of intervention inhering in the United States were not created by the inclusion of the Platt Amendment in either the Cuban Constitution or the Treaty of 1903, but merely recognized thereby, and that such rights date back to the general obligations which the United States assumed before the world by expelling the Spanish Power from Cuba and turning the Government over to the Cubans, and to the specific obligations which the United States assumed in the Treaty of Paris, and are not necessarily comprehensively stated in the Treaty of Relations with Cuba.

I am [etc.]

Henry L. Stimson

12. Not printed.
13. Signed May 22, 1903; Foreign Relations, 1904, p. 243.
14. Treaty of peace between the United States and Spain, signed December 10, 1898, ibid., 1898, p. 831.