While perhaps not the best known inter-American claim, the Pious Fund is surely the most durable. It originated in 1735 when a benefactor and his wife signed over about 450,000 acres of land to the Jesuits for missionary and other Church work in California. The Crown soon assumed management of the Fund; then, after independence, it drifted into the Mexican Treasury; and before long a considerable debt to the California Church had built up.
After the Mexican War the clerics began to get American legal advice, and hearings and arbitrations followed each other well into the twentieth century. In the mid-1960s Mexico offered a lump-sum settlement of $719,546 (U.S.), and a formal agreement on this basis was signed, August 1, 1967. Perhaps Earl Warren pronounced the best eulogy over the venerable suit : “It also proves that no cause is ever settled until it is settled right” (p. 3).
Francis J. Weber has already published an article on the Pious Fund (HAHR, February 1963, pp. 78-94), and the principal function of the present booklet is to close out the account. The work is concise, clear, and authoritative. At the price, however, the reader is entitled to all the proper Spanish accents.
