Mexican

John Steinbeck may have written "Of Mice and Men" as a novella, but he always had theatrical aspirations for it. After the book launched his literary celebrity in 1937, he turned it into a play, which began a respectable Broadway run later that year, and a critically acclaimed film followed. More stage and screen versions have been attempted, but no matter how good the dramatization, "Of Mice and Men" will always be that slim junior-high classic that (despite the teacher's harping on foreshadowing)

When Americans talk about human rights, we speak about the condition of civil liberty in other countries. We don't even use the term when discussing the quality of rights in this nation, satisfied as we are with the status of freedom in the United States. Yet, this is the country in which the highest court of the land permits execution of possibly innocent people and individuals with mental retardation, allows police to search vehicles on a neighbor's word of suspicion, upholds the kidnapping of foreigners for trial in this country and pardons police brutality in the name of "good faith."

I just heard the tragic news: My cheese smuggler died. He was from my dad's native rancho of Jomulquillo in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, a quesero whom hundreds depended on for their queso añejo , a thick, salty fromage unique to the region featuring a chile-tinted orange rind and lovingly nicknamed queso de pata (foot cheese) for its rank smell. This is organic cheese without peer: originating from cows that feed on grassy hills untouched by modernity, processed with a special rennet, crafted using centuries-old traditions.

Officials gathered Thursday on the grounds of the Texas Capitol for the unveiling of the state's Tejano Monument, 11 life-size bronze statues crafted by Laredo artist Armando Hinojosa commemorating the contributions of Texas' Spanish and Mexican settlers. Gov. Rick Perry, who attended the unveiling, said the monument "reflects a larger truth about the origins of Texas, about the contributions of so many Hispanic citizens to the creation of the state we love. " Just before the ceremony, the Los Angeles Times spoke with Emilio Zamora, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, about the 12-year effort to build the monument and its significance.

Three people connected to the U.S. Consulate in Mexico's deadliest city, Ciudad Juarez, were shot to death by men who intercepted their cars as they returned from a child's birthday party, officials said Sunday. Two of the dead, an American couple, were discovered slain in their vehicle, their uninjured baby crying in the back seat. President Obama on Sunday expressed outrage at the drive-by slayings. The three victims were killed in broad daylight Saturday near the city's border with El Paso.

If the murderers of the gifted young El Monte educator and public official Bobby Salcedo ever are brought to justice, we're likely to find that the weapons used to kill him and five other men kidnapped from a bar in the drug-ravaged Mexican city of Gomez Palacio were purchased in the United States. The fraught complexities behind that tragedy -- and thousands like it -- form the backdrop and, more important, the animating moral disquiet for T. Jefferson Parker's terrific new book, "Iron River: A Charlie Hood Novel."

Now Costner owes us a movie that shows the "true perspective" of the Mexican in the development of the West. ABEL PENA Los Angeles

Jefferson Morley's article "The Spy Who Loved Me" (March 27) delivers one of the lowest blows so far to my father's reputation. My father was half Mexican and proud of it. I base this statement on a 42-year association. Yet Morley writes that my father possessed an "antipathy to all things Mexican" and felt "ashamed" of his Mexican heritage. Nor does the article point out that my father vacationed in Mexico and was gratified to meet and talk with his Mexican relatives at a family reunion held during the last year of his life.