The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 2

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

assert control of her national patrimony. Carranza, moreover, accused
the United States of demanding protection for its citizens over and
above that given to Mexicans. Mexico considered the United States'
attitude over the taxes levied on the oil and oil fields as a flagrant
attempt to regulate Mexican internal affairs. On September 1, 1918,
Carranza gave formal declaration to the doctrine bearing his name
when, in his presidential message to Congress, he "applied the prin-
cipal of equality among nations. . . ." In this statement Carranza un-
derscored the mutual respect for sovereignty implicit in international
relations, nonintervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states,
equality of treatment for foreigner and national, and rejection of
extraterritoriality.'
Thus, with the termination of the "war to end all wars" and the
return of the "doughboys," United States officials and press turned
their attentions to Mexico and the growing problems incipient in the
conflict between two national interests. By March, i919, George A.
Chamberlain, the commercial attach in Mexico City, wrote that:
The Mexican situation is an absess [sic] which cries for a lancet. If
Mr. Carranza can postpone its bursting so that he can leave office with
an unbroken record of open hatred and opposition toward the United
States, he will doubtless do so; should the boil burst in the meantime,
we run the risk of being besmirched by such an outpouring of filth
as will astound the American public and throw upon its officers in
that country a burden of accusation never equalled in the hidden rela-
tions between this and other nations. In .the meantime, such an op-
portunity for commercial rehabilitation as has seldom been offered to
two nations will have passed."
Chamberlain's sentiments merely synthesized the frustration felt by
United States diplomats and State Department officials who tired of
President Woodrow Wilson's policy of watchful waiting. In December,
1918, Ambassador Henry P. Fletcher had recommended that Mexico
might negotiate a loan from United States bankers. She must, however,
"come to some arrangement on the petroleum question . . . return
'Daniel James, Mexico and the Americans (New York, 1963), 179; Maria Eugenia L6pez
de Roux, "Relaciones mexicano-norteamericanas (1917-1918) ," Historia mexicana, XV
(January-March, 1965), 447-450. An excellent analysis of the Constitution of 1917 can be
found in Lorenzo Myer Cosio, "El conflicto petrolero entre M6xico y los Estados Unidos
(1917-192o)," Foro internacional, VI (April-June, 1966), 425-465.
'Chamberlain to Henry P. Fletcher, March 1, 1919, State Department Decimal File
711.12/187, State Department Records (Record Group 59, National Archives); references
to these records will hereafter be cited as (RG 59, NA). See also J. Fred Rippy, The
United States and Mexico (New York, 1931), 359.