‘Approaches to the Americas’

Many thanks to The Times for continuing to print the enlightening views of the distinguished writer and statesman Carlos Fuentes.

Upon reading his most recent essay, I was reminded of a sad line of one character in his last novel, “The Old Gringo.” It is an observation that the last American frontier is to the south, “Always to the south . . . What a shame. They’re right when they say this isn’t a border. It’s a scar.” Yet how easy it would be to heal that historical scar between ourselves and our Latin American neighbors to the south by respecting their national integrity and by allowing them the right of self-determination that we once claimed for ourselves in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

PHILIP KIM FRASSE

Los Angeles