The controversy over the insensitive U.S. postage stamp with the atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Hiroshima is nothing new. It follows another series of stamps that is an affront to Mexican Americans and their history.

Recently, the U.S. Postal Service released a series of 20 stamps titled "Legends of the West." Sixteen of them carry the portraits of important figures of the 19th-Century West. On the glue side of the stamps is a description of what made each one a "legend."

Not one of those "legends" is of Mexican ancestry, as if we never existed, never settled the West, never taught the cowboys how to be cowboys, never gave thousands of cities, towns and streets their Spanish names. The exclusion was at best oblivious, at worst, racist.

There are three American Indians--Geronimo, Chief Joseph and Sagagawea--and two African Americans: Bill Pickett, who was a cowboy, rancher and rodeo showman, and Jim Beckwourth, a pioneer mountain man, fur trader and scout.

Other legends portrayed include Annie Oakley, a "dead shot" with a rifle who performed in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and Charles Goodnight, a Texas Ranger, "Indian fighter" and pioneer cattle rancher. Considering the reputation of the Texas Rangers, it's interesting that he is not acknowledged as a Mexican-fighter, but "Indian fighter" says it all.

Also featured are two legends who are notorious in Mexican American history: John Fremont, who pioneered U.S. settlement of California, and frontiersman Kit Carson, another Indian-fighter who was Fremont's scout.

It would have been very simple for those responsible to include the Mexican history of the West. There are many important Californio, Mexicano, Texano and Spanish legends who settled the West before the Yankee came along.

There was Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the military commandant who discouraged Russian settlement of Northern California and later served the cause of California statehood.

There were Father Jose Antonio Martinez, who fought the U.S. takeover of New Mexico but ultimately served in the territorial government, and Pio Pico, the last Mexicano governor of California, later a political leader in Los Angeles.

Numerous Mexicanos fought the Yankee incursion in the Southwest. In U.S. history books, they are portrayed as outlaws. To Mexicanos and Chicanos, they are heroes--Joaquin Murrieta, Tiburcio Vasquez, Elfego Baca, Gregorio Cortez and Juan (Cheno) Cortina, to name a few.