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assassinate a Mexican surveyor, and burned ranchos within the territory of Mexico.
It has done more. In December of last year it sent, or permitted to be sent, a force under the orders of the prefect of San Marcos (a department of Guatemala), which invaded our territory and destroyed the landmark of Pinabete, the same which was demolished by the residents of Tacaná, and which was reconstructed shortly afterward. The said prefect then hoisted the flag of Guatemala precisely upon the cross so mysteriously erected by the Guatemalan engineers near Cuilco Viejo.
Complaint being made at Guatemala of these acts, that government refused to give explanations to our minister, under the pretext that the subject had to be treated in Mexico, because Señor Loaeza had no instructions to receive them. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Senor Montúfar, being pressed by our representative, who sent him a copy of a note from the undersigned manifesting surprise at such conduct, replied that the ground where these events took place belonged to Guatemala, without giving any reasons for such allegation, and overlooking the fact that the undersigned, in his note of the 27th of January last, to which no reply has been given, had demonstrated the contrary.
Meanwhile the term of the Convention of December 7, 1877, had expired on December 31, 1879, without the scientific commissions having concluded their labors. The Mexican Government proposed to that of Guatemala that the said Convention should be renewed for a term long enough to attain the object desired, and ordered its engineers to remain on the frontier, as in fact they have remained, notwithstanding that the
