Ouch

Foreign visits to Mexico, a vital source of the nation's revenue, is suffering: according to statistics from the Tourism Committee in the Chamber of Deputies, tourism is down 20 percent from 2007.

Now seems like a good time to add that the idea of Mexico and Latin America entering a recession seems to have reached a point of general acceptance, with Felipe Calderón acknowledging the fact at a summit with his Latin American counterparts in Brazil.

Last week, it seemed like the government might be drawn into a dispute about when the country was technically in a recession. Such a semantic argument was bound to make Calderón, Carstens, and company look bad, because the fact of two consecutive quarters of negative growth is far less important than the overwhelming feeling of ¡Estamos jodidos! that prevails today. Kudos to Calderón for his forthrightness. (After rereading my post on the matter, I guess I was sucked in, too; shame on me.)

And kudos to El Universal for reviving the long-dormant tradition of referring to executives by their three initials. FCH may not have the legs of JFK or LBJ or FDR, but we here at Gancho appreciate the attempt.