I agree with your interpretation of a "tongue" of Mexican sovereignty "filled
with a bridge" that extends out over and beyond the accretion-altered boundary
in the middle of the river.
I would go so far as to say that this Mexican sovereignty over the Mexican
portion of the bridge encompasses the substance of the bridge itself (including
its foundation piers into the earth), all traffic and persons upon it, all work
for its operation and maintenance, etc. This is all for "the purposes of such
bridge" and would be "relating to the bridge itself" (to use the Treaty's
words). Everything else (the land under the bridge, the territorial airspace
above the bridge, etc.) would be just as if the bridge had never existed.
I would have to say that the accreted land under the Mexican segment of the
bridge was Mexican soil while the Convention of 1884 was in force, but it was
among the many pieces of land that changed sovereignty on the date the 1970
Treaty went into force (April 18, 1972). After all, the 1970 Treaty was to
"Restore to the Rio Grande its character of international boundary in the
reaches where that character has been lost..."
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "L. A. Nadybal" <lnadybal@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 11:25 AM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: MXUS Treaty 1970
> Lowell,
>
> this was a good effort at driving the logic to the "bottom of the
> funnel" to get at the logical end of interpretation. But (ampersand):
> take three of your paragraphs alone, which I've numbered below:
>
> Number 1 says, in effect, "we (US-MEX) posted a border marker on the
> bridge at the middle of the river". In case the river changes, and
> one of us doesn't undo the change, then the river remains the border
> for all purposes EXCEPT those relating to the bridge itself".
>
> I agree that we have a "differentiation" - a "tongue" or tunnel of
> Mexican airspace here that juts out north of the center of the river,
> which is filled with a bridge around which we can draw an
> international border (which, where drawn at the end of the tunnel can
> be moved as the sign is moved along the bridge span.) This tongue
> comes down to earth north of the river at whatever spot(s)on earth are
> occupied by the foundations over which bridge supports are built.
>
> With respect to your paragraph that I numbered as "2.", I interpret
> "rights other than those relating to the bridge itself" in your
> paragraph 1, not to mean "for the purposes of the bridge", which you
> defined as "carrying traffic". For one thing, these rights with
> respect to the "bridge itself" come into play only "in case later
> changes occur" (i.e. river movement, for one). Once the river
> changes, THEN other rights relating to the bridge itself come into
> play. Prior to any change, the Mexican side would have rights to park
> under the bridge on its own territory, because prior to any change,
> the side of the bridge marked by the marker is right above the middle
> of the river - everything south is Mexican. If the river moved south,
> the north side under the bridge becomes American, but limited to the
> extent of "rights with respect to the bridge", which I interpret to
> mean that the rights the mexicans previously had to park under the
> bridge for purposes of the bridge (i.e, to drive a truck under it to
> put up a scaffold so that Mexican workers could scrape rust off the
> underside, etc, etc.) is a right Mexico had "relating to the bridge"
> before the river moved, and a right they don't lose under the treaty
> just because the river moved, the border on the ground went with it
> placing the ground in the US.
>
> This is exactly the same case as we have in the Vennbahn, that we had
> in Steinstuecken before German unification, that existed in one spot
> where the border between German Eupen and Malmedy was at a bridge, and
> which we may have with respect to the bridge over the
> German-Luxembourg condominium. It parallels the tunnel of airspace of
> occupied West Berlin under allied sovereignty that jutted out above
> and across East German airspace that had upper and lower limits of
> altitude by treaty, within which East Germany had no sovereign right,
> except that it wasn't filled with a bridge.
>
> "Vertically differentiated international borders"... I like the sound
> of that! :-) Even the acronym is useful = "V-dibs".
>
> Len
>
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> Lowell wrote and quoted:
>
> 1. "Any rights OTHER than those relating to the BRIDGE ITSELF shall
> be determined, IN CASE LATER CHANGES OCCUR, in accordance with the
> provisions of this Treaty," [which is to say, the middle of the main
> channel]."
>
> 2. "The purpose of bridges is to carry traffic of various sorts
> across the river. For those purposes (only), the monument on the
> bridge is observed. For everything else, the boundary goes wherever
> the river accretes..."
>
> 3. "I fear that honesty forces me to admit that what we have here is
> either a true vertical differentiation or something functionally
> similar. Whichever one calls it is only a matter of semantics. I
> have now come to believe that Mr. Rubio of the IBWC was entirely
> correct when he enunciated the agency's interpretation to me by
> telephone that the accreted land beneath the monumented Mexican
> segment of the bridge is sovereign American territory. (The same
> could be said for the airspace above it.)"
>
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