Letters to the Editor (Sept. 25, 2025)

Where can tourists go?

Editor:

We just returned from our first out-of-state vacation since before Covid. Everything was blindingly expensive, we hated leaving various projects, and plane flights were not enjoyable. We only stayed three nights, but we saw wonderful stuff, ate wonderful food and encountered lovely people who seemed glad to see us.

Not surprising the U.S. tourism industry is in a world of hurt. One Seattle tour guide said Canadians were canceling visits because of the policies and behavior of our current president. Overall, Seattle’s revenue from tourism is down 30 percent.

Many Canadians have canceled trips to the United States lately since Trump spewed false statements and insults at Canada while threatening to make our own citizens pay ridiculous tariffs for Canadian goods. The World Travel and Tourism Council predicted that the U.S. would lose at least $12.5 billion (Forbes says $29 billion) in international spending this year.

The problem is not just disgust with Trump, it’s also fear. Pictures of Trump-decreed troops roaming the streets of our destination cities or hauling away people in ICE vans are off-putting to vacationers, to say the least. The big corporations may survive the downturn but it will be devastating to smaller mom-and-pop shops that depend on tourists to make a profit.

And it’s not just the West Coast. Losses stretch from Las Vegas, Nev., where tourism dropped 12 percent in July, to Cape Cod, Mass., where Canadian bookings are down over 70 percent since last year.

Some caveats. The drop in tourism is partly due to higher prices for almost everything. (Forget Trump’s campaign promises that prices would plunge as soon as he took office.) Part of the slump has been made up by U.S. citizens traveling more in this country. (Many European cities are getting fed up with floods of tourists. In Barcelona, Spain, the latest street sport seems to be protesters shooting tourists with water guns.)

So far, tourism dollars in New Mexico — often considered the “most foreign place in the U.S.” — are down only a bit from last year’s record-breaking haul.

Laura F. Sanchez

Los Lunas

Defending the U.S. Constitution is our duty

Editor:

Sept. 17 was Constitution and Citizenship Day — a day that should remind us that the rights we enjoy are not permanent unless we defend them.

The Constitution established a framework that limits government power while protecting individual liberty. Checks and balances among the three branches were designed to guard against abuse, and in 1791 the Bill of Rights secured freedoms we rely on daily: freedom of speech, religion and the press; protection from unreasonable searches; and fairness in legal proceedings. These principles are not relics of history. They are the guardrails of our democracy.

Yet today, many of these rights are under strain. We see attempts to restrict free expression and assembly, challenges to press freedom and efforts to weaken due process. These liberties endure only if “we the people” demand their protection.

That is why Constitution and Citizenship Day must be more than a quiet observance. It should be a call to action.

Our Constitution gives us not just rights, but responsibility. Democracy is healthiest when citizens engage directly — questioning decisions, holding leaders accountable, and speaking out when freedoms are threatened.

If you are concerned about the direction of our democracy, use your voice. Contact your elected representatives — nationally, at the state level, and locally.

The League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico publishes a Political Directory for Bernalillo and Sandoval Counties, available at lwvcnm.org, with contact information for our representatives. A Who’s Who for Valencia County is being developed.

The Constitution guarantees our right to speak. On September 17 and every day, let’s exercise that right to defend the freedoms that define us.

Starlyn Brown

President, League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico

Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrence and Valencia counties