The Mexican groups called LaRaza and MAPA want to take back the southwest from the U.S. because they claim we took it from them.

The fact is that we paid Mexico ,28 million for empty, undeveloped, desert lands that they did not want and could not hold. Mexico, then as now, was stone broke and needed the money. Mexico had borrowed from the whole world and could not pay its bills.

It is all ours. We paid for it by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1852.

We also paid for Alaska, ,7.2 million in 1867; Florida, ,5 million in 1819; Louisiana, ,15 million in 1803; and the whole east coast and midwest England gave us for commercial rights in 1782 in the Paris Peace Treaty.

Oh yes, and the Dutch settlers paid trading goods to the native Americans for the Island of Manhattan in 1626.

Source: The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, New Haven, Conn.

Justin M. Ruhge

Lompoc