Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday she sent a letter to Google opposing a decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Google Maps.
On Monday, Google announced on social media that it would comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to rename the gulf.
The revision would only apply to U.S. users of Google Maps while the rest of the world will continue seeing the current name.
“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said on social media.
However, Sheinbaum and Mexico contend renaming the entire Gulf of Mexico is an illegal act.
According to the BBC, Sheinbaum cited the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international treaty, to say that the re-naming could only apply to 12 nautical miles out from America’s coastline.
The treaty states that only 12 nautical miles out from a country’s coastline constitutes sovereign territory.
Trump’s executive order detailed the boundaries of the ‘Gulf of America” to include the, “U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
Sheinbaum also made light of the situation saying that Mexico would ask Google to make a name change as well.
“By the way, we are also going to ask for Mexican America to appear on the map,” Sheinbaum said.
Previously, Sheinbaum joked that North America’s name should be changed to “Mexican America” to reflect the boundaries of a 17th century map. That seemed to be a reference to her suggestion of renaming North America as “América Mexicana.”
“For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” she wrote.
A supermajority of Americans are also opposed to the idea of renaming the gulf according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
However, many Americans, primarily Republicans, support renaming the body of water the ‘Gulf of America.’
A legendary beach bar located along the gulf coast has even begun taking orders for ‘Gulf of America’ t-shirts.
Chevron has announced it too will begin using the phrase Gulf of America.