817.00/7–2544: Airgram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Nicaragua (Stewart)
A–260. The Department has given careful consideration in recent months to the status of the Corn Islands.16 As you are doubtless aware the Bryan Chamorro Treaty provided that they should be subject exclusively to the laws and sovereign authority of the United States. The United States has never, however, asserted its jurisdiction over them, except for a strip of land in connection with the establishment of a lighthouse in 1924. The Department understands that the Nicaraguan authorities have maintained de facto jurisdiction over those islands and that they have been used from time to time as a prison.
In view of the publicity which has been given to recent political disturbances in Central America,17 the Department is somewhat perturbed at the use of these islands for the detention of political prisoners, which you mention in your telegram no. 448 of July 14, 3 a.m.18 You are requested to take up this matter orally with President Somoza and to point out that some publicity has already been given to this incident. You should emphasize that this may lead to embarrassment both for the United States and for Nicaragua. You should then request that the practice of detaining political prisoners on the Corn Islands be abandoned.
Please report the results of your representations.
- Two small islands about 40 miles off the east coast of Nicaragua, leased by Nicaragua to the United States Government in 1916 for a term of 99 years as protection for a possible canal across Nicaragua. For text of the Bryan–Chamorro Convention of June 24, 1916, which effected this lease, see Foreign Relations, 1916, p. 849. For correspondence on the early developments of this convention, see ibid., 1913, pp. 1021 ff.↩
- For correspondence on revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Guatemala, see pp. 1087 ff., and pp. 1132 ff., respectively.↩
- Not printed.↩