01 April 2017

News Story: legal expert says Mexico has strong case to sue U.S. for lost territories

by Edna Alcantara

MEXICO CITY, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Never mind the border wall. Mexico has a strong case to sue the United States for territories its northern neighbor seized in the mid 19th century, according to a legal expert.

Armed with historical documents and testimony, Mexico could mount a legal case to annul the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded roughly half of the nation's territory to the United States in 1848, as part of a peace treaty that put an end to the U.S. occupation of Mexico during the Mexican-American War, Mexican criminal lawyer Guillermo Hamdan Castro told Xinhua in an interview.

Over the past three decades, Hamdan has headed a group of legal experts studying the infamous deal, hoping to see the case debated at the Hague-based International Court of Justice.

Hamdan, who says his campaign has the support of Mexican intellectuals, historians and three-time presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, seeks nothing less than to have the treaty "totally nullified."

Mexico "has all of the legal elements to demand the restitution of the more than 2 million square kilometers that were snatched by the United States through the treaty," Hamdan told Xinhua.

Read the full story at Xinhua