812.203/4
The Ambassador in Mexico (Clark) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 29.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Department’s instruction No. 7 of December 4, 1930, advising me of the Department’s desire that I bring to the attention of the Foreign Office an expression of the Department’s [Page 705] disagreement with the action taken by General Jesús Torres Avilés, Military Prosecutor at Guaymas, Sonora, in issuing an order to the American Consular officer in chargé at that place, who was Vice Consul A. F. Yepis, to give testimony at a hearing conducted by General Avilés on November 5, 1930.
I trust the Department will pardon my recalling its attention to the consular immunity incident of 1927, between the United States and Mexico (see Department’s instruction to this Embassy, No. 64, December 17, 1927, file No. 817.00 T 35/20),6 when a Senate investigating Committee having summoned before it the Mexican Consul General of New York, the Mexican Government, invoking the principles and practices of international law, expressed the opinion7 that the Government of the United States ought to extend to the Consul General of Mexico in New York complete immunity from obedience to the order which he had received, and to our reply thereto,8 that the Government of the United States did not on the question of consular immunity hold the views expressed by the Government of Mexico.
If meeting the Department’s convenience, I would appreciate receiving an instruction, giving, as nearly textually as may be possible, the exact representation it wishes me to make in this matter, so that I shall be sure properly to set out the Department’s views.
Respectfully yours,
- Not printed; see Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. iii, pp. 248 ff.↩
- See note from the Mexican Ambassador, December 14, 1927, ibid., p. 250.↩
- Not printed.↩