Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo on Wednesday hit back at President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” joking that the United States should instead be renamed “Mexican America.”
“Obviously the Gulf of Mexico’s name is recognized by the United Nations, by a United Nations agency. But why don’t we call it ‘Mexican America?’ Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Sheinbaum Pardo said as she displayed a mock-map with the new country name.
Trump in an oft-off-topic news conference Tuesday argued for the U.S. to rename the gulf, and several Republicans backed him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a Republican from Georgia, even said she plans to introduce a bill in the House that would enact the change.
But such a move would not have international impact: The International Hydrographic Organization names Earth’s bodies of waters, although some countries use different names. For example, while the U.S. has used the name Rio Grande to designate the river between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, Mexico calls it the Rio Bravo.
Trump in recent weeks has pushed to remake the maps of North America, arguing Canada and Greenland, as well as the Panama Canal, should belong to the United States — and threatening to use military force to do so in his Tuesday remarks.
