mala have laid claim to Nicaragua or Costa Rica, since both those countries formed provinces of the extinguished captaincy-general. Pareda's mission was to effect a treaty for the determination of the boundary, and the settlement of pending disputes, and he submitted a project to Pavon, the Guatemalan minister. But his efforts were of no avail. A new aspect was given to Guatemala's demands. Pavon put in a claim against Mexico for nearly half a million of dollars, known as the deuda de Chiapas.[1] In 1858 Pereda was recalled, and for fifteen years the matter remained in abeyance.
In August 1874 Ramon Uriarte, Guatemalan envoy extraordinary to Mexico, presented a memorandum to Lafragua, the minister of relations, in which he again brought forward the boundary question, and proposed to make the project of the treaty discussed by Perada and Pavon in 1854 the starting-point. Negotiations were carried on for some time without interruption; a convention was signed December 7, 1877, and a joint commission appointed. Nevertheless, matters did not go on smoothly; the labors of the commission were several times stopped, and at one time the danger of hostilities breaking out was imminent. During the years 1879 and 1880 several irruptions into Soconusco were made by bands of armed men, proceeding from Guatemalan territory; and in December of the latter year Tuxtla Chico was attacked by a force 200 strong, commanded by the jefe político of San Márcos, a department of Guatemala. Mexico grew angry, began to contemplate war, and sent a strong force into Chiapas. But milder measures prevailed; and on September 27, 1882, a treaty
- ↑ The grounds for this claim were as follows: When independence was proclaimed the united provinces of Central America assumed the public debt! of the extinguished captaincy-general, and when the union was dissolved in 1947, to each of the Central American republics its corresponding quota was assigned. Guatemala claimed that Mexico, having appropriated Chiapas, ought to pay that state's quota, amounting to $458,060. Martinez, Cuestion Mex. y Guat., 103-7.
