Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government isn’t ruling out a lawsuit against Google if it continues to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, as decreed by President Donald Trump.
Sheinbaum again pointed out at her press conference Thursday that Trump’s decree about the body of water for centuries called the Gulf of Mexico can only legally apply to the “continental shelf of the United States."
“We have sovereignty over our continental shelf," she declared.
The U.S. cannot unilaterally change the name of a body of water which it shares with Cuba and Mexico because 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 from the coastline, she noted.
Despite the fact that her government sent a letter to Google calling the company “wrong” for switching the name, Google has insisted on following Trump’s orders, Sheinbaum complained.
Google reported last month on its X account that changing the name at the whim of the president follows its “long-standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.” Google was apparently referring to Trump’s executive order unilaterally switching the name.
Sheinbaum quipped in response that portions of America should now be known as “América Mexicana,”which dates back to maps beginning in 1610, once Mexico’s government sources are “updated.”
Currently, Google maps in America show the body of water as the Gulf of America, and as the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico. Everywhere else in the word both names are used for the gulf on Google maps.
Google has not responded to Sheinbaum’s lawsuit threat.
This week, the White House barred Associated Press reporters from press events because the news agency uses the “Gulf of Mexico” rather than Trump’s name for the gulf.
