Mexico has sued the technology company Google for adopting United States President Donald Trump’s labelling of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the lawsuit on Friday, without providing further details. Mexico’s foreign relations ministry had previously sent letters to the tech giant asking it not to use “Gulf of America” to refer to waters within its territory.
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Currently, the Gulf of Mexico appears as the “Gulf of America” on Google Maps for users within the US. It appears as “Gulf of Mexico” for users outside of the US.
On January 20, his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order changing the body of water’s name in all references by the federal government. A few weeks later, on February 9, he flew over the gulf and declared it to be “Gulf of America Day” in a separate proclamation.
Critics have said the move is in line with Trump’s expansionist goals, which include threatening to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and pushing for Canada to become the “51st state”.
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The body of water in question, an oceanic basin cradled between the southern US and Mexico, has carried the name “Gulf of Mexico” for more than 400 years.
Mexico has argued that, if the US is to adopt the term “Gulf of America”, the new name should only apply to the part of the gulf that sits over the US continental shelf. That boundary generally aligns with the US-Mexico maritime border.
In February, Cris Turner, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, told Mexico it would not change its naming convention, according to a letter shared by Sheinbaum at the time.
Turner said the company was following its “longstanding maps policies impartially and consistently across all regions”.
Google, part of the Alphabet conglomerate, has said it updates its region names according to the US Geographic Names System.
Since taking office, Trump has also moved to change federal documents referring to the tallest peak in North America as Denali, its traditional Alaskan name. He has reverted its name to Mount McKinley, a more recent name adopted by gold miners to honour a slain president.
The controversy over the “Gulf of Mexico”, however, has galvanised politicians in Trump’s Republican Party.
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives voted along party lines, 211 to 206, to formalise “Gulf of America” as the official name, with only one Republican joining the Democrats in opposition. The bill is likely to face steeper odds in the Senate, should it be taken up for a vote.
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The Mexico-Google standoff has not been the only tussle related to Trump’s renaming of the gulf.
A month after taking office, the White House sought to block The Associated Press news agency from reporting from the Oval Office and on board Air Force One, in retaliation for the organisation’s insistence on referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.
A federal judge ordered the White House last month to restore the agency’s full access to cover presidential events, citing First Amendment rights that bar the administration from punishing news outlets for the content of their speech.
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