MEXICO has threatened to take Google to court over its “Gulf of America” name change on maps for users in the United States, pointing out that much of the body of water lies outside U.S. maritime borders in regions controlled by Mexico and Cuba.
Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, said Monday at a news conference that President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico applied only to the U.S. continental shelf — the area of seabed to which the U.S. lays claim under the law of the sea and maritime agreements with other coastal states.
Mexico has therefore asked Google to fully restore the name “Gulf of Mexico” to its Maps service for areas outside U.S. territory.
“What Google is doing here is changing the name of the continental shelf of Mexico and Cuba,” Sheinbaum told reporters.
“Gulf of America” went into official use last week on a U.S. government database of geographic names, as well as on Google Maps. Google said at the time that people in Mexico would still see the name “Gulf of Mexico,” while those outside the two countries would see both names.
Sheinbaum first said last week that Mexico was considering a civil lawsuit against Google after the company’s decision to use the name specified by Trump.
Google did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the threat of a lawsuit.
At the news conference Monday, Sheinbaum shared with reporters a letter that Mexico received Feb. 10 from Cris Turner, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, after Mexico initially raised its concerns over the name change.
In the letter, Turner said the change was “consistent with our normal operating procedure to reflect on our platforms geographic names prescribed by different authoritative government sources, including where authoritative sources may differ.”
Sheinbaum said Mexico then wrote to Google to explain that under international maritime law, a country’s sovereignty over its territorial sea extends to a maximum of 12 nautical miles.
She shared a copy of the letter, dated Feb. 11, in which Mexico’s Foreign Secretary, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, stated that “under no circumstance will Mexico accept the renaming of a geographic zone within its own territory and under its jurisdiction” and would take legal action if necessary.
Ties between Mexico and the United States have also been tested in the first few weeks of the Trump administration over trade tariffs and border security.
When the gulf’s name change was first signaled by Trump in January, Sheinbaum sarcastically said during a news conference that the United States should be renamed “Mexican America” in response, referring to a founding document dating from the 1800s, before Mexico’s constitution, according to the Associated Press.
The White House last week barred AP reporters from attending events in the Oval Office or flying with Trump on Air Force One because the organization has continued to use the name “Gulf of Mexico.” In justifying its stylistic convention, the AP said the Gulf of Mexico has had that name for at least 400 years — the length of time it has been used by European explorers and mapmakers.
The 218,000-square-mile oceanic basin spans the eastern coast of Mexico and the southeastern coast of the United States to the western end of Cuba.
The maritime boundaries between Mexico and the United States were set by bilateral agreements in the 1970s. The United States has laid claim to some 46 per cent of the gulf, while Mexico has claimed 49 percent, with Cuba controlling the remainder.
