MEXIKO FÜHRT DIE „EXKLUSIVE WIRTSCHAFTSZONE“ VOR SEINER KÜSTE EIN

From the beginning, Mexico was one of the first states claiming the exclusive economic zone. The setting up of this zone by Mexico in July 31, 1976 remains in the recent development of this matter: One month after US-President Harry S. Truman's Proclamation on the continental shelf Mexico claimed the shelf before its coasts. In 1972 the Afro-Asiatic countries demanded the body of sea, therein coastal state would have special jurisdiction to explore and exploit for its own benefit the marine resources and those of the seabed and subsoil of the sea and to prevent marine pollution. This "patrimonial sea" — the favoured denotation in Latin America — was claimed at the subregional level in the Declaration of Santo Domingo, adopted at the Specialized Conference of the Carribean Countries (including Mexico) on Problems of the Sea, held in June 9, 1972. In view of the neighbourhood of the United States Mexico formulated compromises in the debates of the 2nd and 3rd session of the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea. After the United States give up the resistance against the exclusive economic zone Mexico establishes this zone as a further step in „Mexicanization“ of its own resources. Legal basis is an amendment to article 27 of the constitution, promulgated in 1917. This article, declaring territory and the territorial sea to property of state, was basis for nationalizing the foreign petroleum industry in 1938. The important details of the law concerning the execution of the constitutional amendment and therefore establishing the exclusive economic zone are verbal quoted. Now, the Gulf of California in its whole length is a land sea of Mexico, one of the results of this law.