Road Blocks

The PRI is showing some opposition to Calderón's plan to do away with the Secretariat of Tourism, making the superficially reasonable point that since tourism is Mexico's third most important source of revenue, there should be some federal coordination. I say "superficially" in the previous sentence because while that has some logic to it, what does a tourism ministry actually have to do? It's not like they need to set standards across an industry, or make sure that Cabo and Cancún are working toward a common goal. The mere sum of the revenue the industry produces isn't a proper indicator of whether it needs a cabinet agency; after all, two of Mexico's most influential companies are the breweries mentioned in the previous posts, but no one thinks that Mexico needs a Secretariat of Beer. I kind of imagine (perhaps wrongly) that most of the Secretariat of Tourism's efforts go toward promotion, but that hardly seems like a necessary use of federal money.