GOLD, DRUGS AND CLEAN CASH

Although I found the account of the Colombian drug-money laundering through L.A.’s jewelry district interesting reading (“Gold, Drugs and Clean Cash,” by Evan Lowell Maxwell, Feb. 18), a few points bother me.

Maxwell’s portrayal of the new Armenian immigrants as coming from “ghettos in the Soviet Union, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iran” is not true. Most do not come from ghettos. Many were among the more wealthy in these countries, living in the better upper-class areas until recent political and economic turmoil prodded their departure to greener pastures.

Maxwell’s portrayal of the new Armenians as having an “unusually strong sense of insularity and distrust” of police and government is also not, in general, true. While many of them may feel more distrust than most native-born Americans, most of them feel this no more than non-Armenian immigrants.

Maxwell need not have made his over-generalization to try to explain how the “La Mina” Armenians got started in their money-laundering scheme--”by maintaining closer ties with some of their countrymen who’d emigrated to South America than they did with the Armenian community of Los Angeles.” (Incidentally, this is not an “explanation” of how the initial Medellin contacts were made. It is only speculation.)

Lastly, Maxwell quotes Gregory Mikaelian as saying that the new Armenian jewelers “don’t have the background in craftsmanship . . . their material is all mass-produced.” This is certainly not generally true. Many of the new Armenian jewelers are second- through fourth-generation custom craftsmen who have been developing their skills for decades. Maxwell certainly does help Mikaelian make his point, however, that “newcomers face considerable resentment, even from old-line Armenians on Hill Street.”

WAYNE K. ALLER, Reseda