To the editor:

John A. Bond (“Hispanic Heritage,” Public Forum, June 9) needs to read a book by the late Octavio Paz, “Labyrinth of Solitude.” The late Nobel laureate was the former ambassador from Mexico to India writing about his own country in 1961 that Mexico was outgrowing its own ecosystem and needed to work on overpopulation, food distribution and economics.

Paz further points out the Western Hemisphere was inhabited by Native Americans in the North, Meso-Americans in Central America and Mexico and by native populations of South America. Modern “Hispanic” immigrants are largely a mix of Spanish heritage, Mexican heritage and Meso-American heritage. Bond confuses the early explorers of New Spain and founders of Santa Fe, N.M., with the quite different origins of the much larger Meso-American populations of Mexico.

Many friends in Santa Fe consider themselves “nortenos” and not allied with modern Mexico but rather with New Mexico only, which is not the same history as nationalism in Mexico itself.

Sven Erik Alstrom,

Lawrence