To the editor:

Your article on Hispanic immigrants provides an object lesson on the negative assumptions about Hispanics that prevail in the dominant culture.

From the first paragraph, which details the labor jobs that Hispanics come here for, through the entire article, which eventually and inevitably correlates Hispanics and illegal immigration, the article ignores Hispanics other than laborers.

Even when you interviewed the one Hispanic entrepreneur you took the time to find, you asked him about illegal immigrants.

Hispanics don’t just come to Lawrence to “scrub dishes” or “fix roofs.” Hispanics also come to Lawrence to be professors, to practice law, to provide accounting services, to manage retail stores, to open profitable businesses, and to fill every other possible role in the economy and the society.

The reality is that the Spanish, led by Coronado, were the first Europeans to come to what is now Kansas. The children of those male Spanish conquistadors and Native American women (mestizos) were the first “Hispanics” in Kansas. They were born here, as were many of us who are mestizos/Hispanics. Hispanics are as American and Kansan as any other Kansans.

From now on, when you write about Hispanics, please search your conscience and your subconscious for your own personal issues of racial and cultural discrimination.

And to the readers of the article, the citizens of Lawrence and Kansas and the United States: When you fill professional positions, make friends, or choose service providers, question yourselves about whether you are unfairly judging people by the color of their skin and by their ethnic or cultural heritage.

Mike Cuenca,

Lawrence