Standard Oil: The Reply to Mexico

It will be recalled that the seizure of the American and other foreign oil properties in Mexico in March, 1938, was the culmination of a long series of confiscatory acts depriving foreigners of property and rights acquired in good faith under the laws and Constitution of Mexico; that for years the Mexican Government had been seeking to squeeze out the foreign owners and take over these oil properties; that seven months before the seizure was made the American oil companies wrote to the Department of State in Washington stating that the ultimate aim of Mexico was confiscation; that the seizure was carried out in violation of the Mexican law of expropriation and of the Mexican Constitution itself; that, in addition, the Mexican Government has denied that any compensation is due for the value of the oil in the subsoil of the seized properties—which obviously constitutes the chief value of any oil property—on the specious but unsound ground that the owners of the land had no “property right” in this oil; although they admittedly had the exclusive and irrevocable right to extract it.