Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has chastised Google for kowtowing to Donald Trump by changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, and wants the United States to be known as “América Mexicana.”
Sheinbaum slammed Google after Trump unilaterally ruled in an executive order last week that the Gulf of Mexico would now be referred to as the “Gulf of America” – and Google promptly agreed to comply on its Google maps.
All that is required for such a name change is for U.S. paperwork to make the changeover, Google noted in a statement Monday on X. Google stated that the move was consistent with its “longstanding practice of applying name changes” when they were simply “updated in official government sources.”
The business also stated that it will “quickly” alter the name of North America’s tallest peak, Alaska’s Denali, to Mt. McKinley, as Trump has requested in a move that has sparked outrage, after official documentation are updated.
Trump issued an executive order to “honor America’s greatness.”
According to Google, Americans will see the “Gulf of America” on their Google maps, while Mexicans will see the “Gulf of Mexico,” and the rest of the world will see both.
Sheinbaum complained to Trump and Google’s name grab in a letter to the corporation, which she gave reporters on Thursday. However, if Google continues to change the titles on its maps, Sheinbaum wants the United States to be designated as América Mexicana, she stated on Wednesday.
Sheinbaum knows that she has no jurisdiction to do so, just as Trump has no right to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, she stated.
The United States cannot unilaterally change the name of a body of water that it shares with Cuba and Mexico because the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that an individual country’s sovereign area is limited to 12 nautical miles from the coastline, she explained.
“If a country wants to change the designation of something in the sea, it would only apply up to 12 nautical miles,” Sheinbaum told a news conference. “It cannot apply to the rest, specifically the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we described in detail to Google.
In a tit for tat, Sheinbaum is asking Google to depict the map of América Mexicana as comprising regions of the United States.
“We ask that when you put América Mexicana in the search engine, the map appears that we presented,” she told the company.
Trump has not responded to Sheinbaum’s demand.
Google has not responded to The Independent’s concerns about whether it will put areas of the United States on América Mexicana on Google Maps after the transfer is recorded in official Mexican records, which appears to be the only Google need for such a shift.
The name América Mexicana first appeared on maps around 1607. It includes several sections of what is now known as the United States.
