Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/93

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LOANS AND CLAIMS
75

000,000 pesos interest due. Luis Cabrera, Secretary of the Treasury in President Carranza's Cabinet, reported the total national debt as about 1,000,000,000 pesos, or $500,000,000 United States gold. This estimate did not include a number of important items said to be claimed by several foreign governments.[1] The secretary of Hacienda announced that the total debt as of December 31, 1920, including foreign, internal, and state delegations, amounted to $426,791,555 Mexican. Accrued interest and Tehuantepec Railroad bonds amounted to $197,707,142 Mexican. The total of these items is $624,498,697 Mexican.[2]

These estimates by employees of the Carranza and Obregón governments are much smaller than those of some of the best informed Mexicans outside governmental circles. A calculation published under the direction of a group of Mexican economists places the interior and exterior debt in August, 1920, at $1,200,000,000 Mexican. The obligations that the country has incurred through damages to banking, railway, and other interests belonging to nationals and foreigners is referred to as an additional large but unnamed sum. The cash

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    the Diario Oficial, September 2 et seq, 1920, reported the entire obligations, foreign and domestic, as totaling 657,599,122 pesos, including interest due.

  1. These statements are based on the summary in the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, November 15, 1919, p. 1837. The testimony as to the amount of the Mexican debts is presented in detail in Investigation of Mexican Affairs, Hearing Before a Sub-committee of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, 66th Congress, 1st Session, pursuant to S. Res. 106, part 3, Washington, 1919.
  2. Commerce Reports, June 14, 1921.