Indigenous People

Re “The Hidden Anxiety in a Taco-Vendor Fight,” Opinion, July 11: Ruben Navarrette states that “Mexicans were, as a matter of history, in the [Arizona] desert first” and the offspring of the “uninvited” white Europeans have conveniently forgotten this fact. Navarrette is equally lacking in memory.

Was there not an indigenous population in Arizona (as well as New Mexico and California) before there were Mexicans? The lands of these indigenous people were colonized (stolen) by the Spanish (Europeans) and became part of Mexico after the collapse of the Spanish empire in the Southwest. The “uninvited” white immigrants from the east whom Navarrette refers to were the third group (Spain, Mexico, United States) to colonize the Southwest since the early 18th century.

CLIFF STOKES

Anaheim