The Mexican government has sent a letter to Google rejecting the technology company’s decision to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps in the United States, in line with the announcement by the new tenant of the White House, Donald Trump.
The letter, sent by the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, states that “the name Gulf of Mexico is not due to an imposition by a single government source, as Google wrongly suggests,” and argues that it is “a name that is historically accepted and registered, which in addition to being an international custom, is legally registered in the indexes of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO),” of which both Mexico and the United States are part.
The president of the Latin American country, Claudia Sheinbaum, showed the document during the morning press conference in which she declared that “if a country wants to change the designation of something in the sea, it would only apply up to twelve nautical miles (22 kilometers). It cannot be applied to the rest, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we explained in detail to Google.”
These statements come after Google announced earlier this week that Google Maps users in the United States would see the new name proposed by Trump, defending that its measure responded to the “practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
The Trump administration previously decided to change the official names of the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali (Alaska) to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively, “which reaffirms the nation’s commitment to preserving the extraordinary heritage of the United States and ensuring that future generations of Americans celebrate the legacy of its heroes and its historical assets.”
Sheinbaum rejected this proposal in early January –before the Republican took power– and suggested in an ironic tone that the United States should then be called “Mexican America,” appealing to a text from the early 19th century.
