9. [BORDERLANDS].  MEXICO. SECRETARÍA DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES. Memoranda y notas relativas cambiadas entre el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y el Ministerio Plenipotenciario de los Estados-Unidos. Mexico: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1877. 45 [1 blank] pp. (text in English and Spanish). 8vo, original green printed wrappers, stitched.  Front wrap with small tear at lower blank margin (no loss), irregular dime-sized hole on lower wrapper affecting last two leaves (costing no text), otherwise fine.  A rare, official adjunct to the Borderland troubles of the 1870s.

      First edition.  Not in standard sources.  One of the documents in the long running dispute between Mexico and the United States concerning cross border raids resulting in the loss of life and property.  The chronic social and political unrest that existed along the Mexican northern borderlands had long been a source of controversy between Mexico and the United States. Charges were traded back and forth that Texans dressed as Native Americans were plundering Mexican settlements and that raiders from Mexico were stealing large numbers of cattle from Texas ranches.  These problems grew so severe that they resulted in official accusations exchanged between the two governments, as is the case here.  The culmination of this process were the reports of the Comisión Pesquisidora de la Frontera del Norte, which accused the United States of actually perpetrating atrocities against Mexicans.

     After the United States sent a commission to Texas to investigate its side of the case, the Mexican government formed a similar commission, who gathered evidence from their own countrymen.  That commission’s reports were published between 1874 and 1877 in Mexico City and Monterey (see Howes I32-33). Ironically, the problems covered here were eventually resolved by the gradual spread of law and order in Texas itself, which reduced cattle rustling, and by the eventual conquering by the United States of its own Native American population.  ($500-1,000)

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