River banks-Exploitation-Executive order March 12, 1920_ Decree of April 13, 1917, with amendments of December 29, 1919_ Regulations of April 14, 1917, for the stamp tax established by the Decree of April 13, 1917, with amendments of March 8, 1918__ Decree of October 16, 1917, providing that the Department of Finance shall fix every two months the tax on crude petroleum___ Circular of May 23, 1917, in regard to infalsificable tax established 438 CONSTITUTION OF 1857. PERTINENT SECTIONS. Article 14. No retroactive law shall be enacted. Article 27. Private property shall not be taken without the consent of the owner, except for reasons of public welfare, compensation having been made. The law shall determine the authority to make the expropriation and the conditions on which it shall be carried out. No religious corporations nor institutions of whatever character, denomination, duration or object, nor civil corporations, when under the patronage, direction or administration of the former, or of ministers of any creed shall have legal capacity to acquire in fee, or administer, real property, other than the buildings immediately and directly destined to the service or purposes of the said corporations and institutions. Nor shall they have legal capacity to acquire or administer loans made on such real property. Civil corporations and institutions not comprised within the above provision, may acquire and administer, in addition to the buildings mentioned, real property and loans made on such real property required for their maintenance and purposes, subject to the requisites and limitations to be established by the Federal law to be enacted by the Congress on the subject. (As amended, May 14, 1901.) Article 32. Mexicans shall be preferred under equal circumstances to foreigners for all appointive public employments, offices, or commissions, when citizenship is not indispensable. * * * Article 33. Aliens are those who do not possess the qualifications prescribed by article 30. They shall be entitled to the guarantees granted by Section 1, Title 1, of the present Constitution, except that in all cases the Government has the right to expel undesirable foreigners. They are under obligation to contribute to the public expenses as the law may provide, and to obey and respect the institutions, laws, and authorities of the country, subjecting themselves to the decisions and sentences of the tribunals, and shall not be entitled to seek other redress than that which the laws concede to Mexicans. Article 72. The Congress shall have power: * * * X. To enact mining and commercial codes, which shall be binding throughout the whole Republic. The banking law shall form a part of the code of commerce. (As amended, December 14, 1883.) PERTINENT SECTIONS OF LAW OF NOVEMBER 22, 1884. Art. 6. Foreigners may acquire mining property on such terms and with such limitations as the laws of the Republic grant them the capacity to acquire, own and transfer ordinary property. * * * Art. 10. The following substances are the exclusive property of the owner of the land, who may therefore develop and enjoy them, without the formality of entry (denuncio) or special adjudication: IV. * waters. * * * petroleum and gaseous springs, or springs of warm or medicinal In order to develop these substances the owner of the land shall subject his operations to all rules and orders of a police nature. PERTINENT SECTIONS OF LAW OF JUNE 4, 1892. Art. 4. The owner of the land may freely work, without a special license (concesión) in any case whatsoever, the following mineral substances: mineral fuels, oils, and mineral waters. Art. 5. All mining property legally acquired and such as hereafter may be acquired in pursuance of this law shall be irrevocable and perpetual, so long as the Federal property tax be paid, in pursuance of the provisions of the law creating the said tax. PERTINENT SECTIONS OF LAW OF NOVEMBER 25, 1909. Art. 1. The following property is owned directly by the Nation and is subject to the provisions of this law: I. Ore bodies of all inorganic substances which in veins, in blankets, or in masses of whatsoever form, constitute deposits the composition of which is distinct from that of the country rock, such as deposits of gold, platinum, silver, copper, iron, cobalt, nickel, manganese, lead, mercury, tin, chromium, antimony, zinc and bismuth; of sulphur, arsenic and tellurium; of rock salt; and of precious stones. II. Placers of gold and platinum. Art. 2. The following are the exclusive property of the owner of the soil: I. Ore bodies or deposits of mineral combustibles, of whatsoever form or variety. II. Ore bodies or deposits of bituminous substances. III. Ore bodies or deposits of salts which outcrop at the surface. IV. Springs of surface and subterranean waters, subject to the prescriptions of the general law and of the special laws on waters, without prejudice to the provisions of Article 9. V. The country rock and substances of the soil, such as slate, prophyry, basalt and limestone, and the earths, sands and clays. VI. Bog and residual iron, alluvial tin, and the ochres. CONSTITUTION OF 1917. PERTINENT SECTIONS. * Art. 14. No law shall be given retroactive effect to the prejudice of any person whatsoever. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, possessions or rights except by means of a suit instituted before a duly created court, in which the essential elements of procedure are observed and in accordance with laws enacted prior to the act. In criminal cases no penalty shall be imposed by mere analogy or even by a priori evidence, but the penalty shall be decreed by a law in every respect applicable to the crime in question. In civil suits the final judgment shall be according to the letter or the juridical interpretation of the law; in the absence of the latter, the general legal principles shall govern. Art. 27. The ownership of lands and waters comprised within the limits of the national territory is vested originally in the Nation, which has had, and has, the right to transmit title thereof to private persons, thereby constituting private property. Private property shall not be expropriated except for reasons of public welfare and by means of compensation. The Nation shall have at all times the right to impose on private property such limitations as the public interest may demand as well as the right to regulate the enjoyment of natural resources, which are susceptible of appropriation, in order to conserve them and equitably to distribute the public wealth. For this purpose necessary measures shall be taken to divide large landed estates; to develop small landed holdings; to establish new centers of rural population with such lands and waters as may be indispensable to them; to encourage agriculture and to prevent the destruction of natural resources, and to protect property from damage detrimental to society. Settlements, hamlets situated on private property and communes which lack lands or water or do not possess them in sufficient quantities for their needs shall have the right to be provided with them from the adjoining properties, always having due regard for small landed holdings. Wherefore, all grants of land made up to the present time under the decree of January 6, 1915, are confirmed. Private property acquired for the said purposes shall be considered as taken for public welfare. In the Nation is vested the legal ownership (dominio directo) of all minerals or substances which in veins, layers, masses, or beds constitute deposits whose nature is different from the components of the land, such as minerals from which metals and metaloids used for industrial purposes are extracted; beds of precious stones, rock salt and salt lakes formed directly by marine waters, products derived from the decomposition of rocks, when their exploitation requires underground work; phosphates which may be used for fertilizers; solid mineral fuels; petroleum and all hydrocarbons-solid, liquid or gaseous. In the Nation is likewise vested the ownership of the waters of territorial seas to the extent and in the terms fixed by the law of nations; those of lakes and inlets of bays; those of interior lakes of natural formation which are directly connected with permanent waters; those of principal rivers or tributaries from the points at which there is a permanent current of water in their beds to their mouths, whether they flow to the sea or cross two or more States; those of intermittent streams which traverse two or more States in their main body; the waters of rivers, streams, or ravines, when they bound the national territory or that of the States; waters extracted from mines; and the beds and banks of the lakes and streams hereinbefore mentioned, to the extent fixed by law. Any other stream of water not comprised within the foregoing enumeration shall be considered as an integral part of the private property through which it flows; but the development of the waters when they pass from one landed property to another shall be considered of public utility and shall be subject to the provisions prescribed by the States. In the cases to which the two foregoing paragraphs refer, the ownership of the Nation is inalienable and may not be lost by prescription; concessions shall be granted by the Federal Government to private parties or civil or commercial corporations organized under the laws of Mexico, only on condition that said resources be regularly developed, and on the further condition that the legal provisions be observed. Legal capacity to acquire ownership of lands and waters of the nation shall be governed by the following provisions: I. Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership in lands, waters and their appurtenances, or to obtain concessions to develop mines, waters or mineral fuels in the Republic of Mexico. The Nation may grant the same right to foreigners, provided they agree before the Department of Foreign Affairs to be considered Mexicans in respect to such property, and accordingly not to invoke the protection of their Governments in respect to the same, under penalty, in case of breach, of forfeiture to the Nation of property so acquired. Within a zone of 100 kilometers from the frontiers, and of 50 kilometers from the sea coast, no foreigner shall under any conditions acquire direct ownership of lands and waters. ** IV. Commercial stock companies shall not acquire, hold, or administer rural properties. Companies of this nature which may be organized to develop any manufacturing, mining, petroleum or other industry, excepting only agricultural industries, may acquire, hold or administer lands only in an area absolutely necessary for their establishments or adequate to serve the purposes indicated, which the Executive of the Union or of the respective State in each case shall determine. * VII. Excepting the corporations to which Clauses III, IV, V and VI hereof refer, no other civil corporation may own or administer on its own behalf real estate or mortgage loans derived therefrom, with the single exception of buildings designed directly and immediately for the purposes of the institution. The States, the Federal District and the Territories, as well as the municipalities throughout the Republic, shall enjoy full legal capacity to acquire and hold all real estate necessary for public services. The Federal and State laws shall determine within their respective jurisdictions those cases in which the occupation of private property shall be considered of public welfare; and in accordance with the said laws the administrative authorities shall make the corresponding declaration. The amount fixed as compensation for the expropriated property shall be based on the sum at which the said property shall be valued for fiscal purposes in the catastral or revenue offices, whether this value be that manifested by the owner or merely impliedly accepted by reason of the payment of his taxes on such a basis, to which there shall be added ten per cent. The increased value which the property in question may have acquired through improvements made subsequent to the date of the fixing of the fiscal value shall be the only matter subject to expert opinion and to judicial determination. The same procedure shall be observed in respect to objects whose value is not recorded in the revenue offices. All proceedings, findings, decisions and all operations of demarcation, concession, composition, judgment, compromise, alienation, or auction which may have deprived properties held in common by co-owners, hamlets situated on private property, settlements, congregations, tribes and other settlement or organizations still existing since the law of June 25, 1856, of the whole or a part of their lands, woods and waters, are declared null and void; all findings, resolu |