Mexican President condemns Google for Gulf of Mexico name change
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a formal letter to Google opposing its decision to comply with Donald Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
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Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum says she sent a letter to Google asking the company not to comply with President Donald Trump’s order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps app.
Sheinbaum showed the letter to reporters during a news conference Thursday. She said that her letter to Google argues that the United States cannot unilaterally rename the body of water since it shares it with Cuba and Mexico. The Mexican government says the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dictates that an individual country’s sovereign territory only extends up to 12 nautical miles out from the coastline, she said.
“If a country wants to change the designation of something in the sea, it would only apply up to 12 nautical miles. It cannot apply to the rest, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we explained in detail to Google,” Sheinbaum told reporters Thursday.
Sheinbaum also referenced a joke she previously made saying that if countries were going to start renaming things, perhaps the United States should be called “Mexican America,” citing a map of the continent from 1607. Sheinbaum said her letter to Google asked the search engine to prominently display the map of Mexican America.
“We ask that when you put Mexican America in the search engine, the map appears that we presented,” she said.
Google did not immediately respond to a USA TODAY request for comment Friday morning.
Will Google change the name of the Gulf of Mexico?
The move comes after Trump signed an executive order last week requiring the federal government to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on official maps. Google said on social media Monday it will apply the name change when it has been updated in official government sources.
The company also said it will start using the name Mount McKinley to refer to the mountain in Alaska currently called Denali, another renaming decision from Trump.
“We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps,” the company said on X Monday. “We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
“For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated,” the company said. “When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.”
“Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name,” Google said. “Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”
Contributing: Elizabeth Weise & Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY; Reuters
Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at Gdhauari@gannett.com.