Mexico’s Expropriated Lands

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 183, 5 August 1938, Page 8

Mexico’s Expropriated Lands

NO PROVISION IN LAW FOR COMPENSATION United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. MEXICO CITY, August 3. The newspaper Ultimaas Noticias states that Mexico has replied to the United States Note of July 21 accusing the Mexican Government of failing to make an earnest effort to pay for the expropriated American-owned farmlands in Mexico and to negotiate the proposed machinery settlement by international arbitration. Mexico rejects arbitration, the Government maintaining that “no principle, universally accepted theory, nor realised practice is found in internation law which makes obligatory payment, immediate compensation, nor even deferred compensation for expropriations of a general impersonal character such as Mexico carried out in the redistribution of land.” The American Notes made the charge that the seizure of property of foreign nationals without compensation not only jeopardised the “good neighbour" policy but the whole realm of amicable international relations. WILL PAY WHEN AND HOW SHE CAN NEW IrORK,l r ORK, August 3. The Mexico City correspondent of the New York Times states that the Note says Mexico will pay when and how she can, and intimates that the United States in the same position would have expropriated the funds without payment if she had been financially unable to pay.