President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico on Friday morning said her government had sued Google over the company’s decision to label the Gulf of Mexico as ‘Gulf of America’ — a spat going back to February, when the Trump administration issued an executive order to rename the gulf.
The order prompted some local governments and lawmakers in the United States to embrace the use of the name on official documents. It also caused Google to implement the change on its maps. Users in the United States would see the body of water with the new name while people in Mexico would continue seeing Gulf of Mexico, the company announced in a statement. The rest of the world would see both names.
But for Ms. Sheinbaum, who once playfully joked that the United States could be renamed “Mexican America,” even that compromise crosses a line. The unilateral attempt to rename the gulf has provoked ridicule and anger in Mexico, where many people have a negative opinion of Mr. Trump but generally approve Ms. Sheinbaum’s cool-headed approach to navigate his string of threats, according to recent polls.
“What we are saying is: ‘Google, abide by what the U.S. government has approved,’” she told reporters, referring to the order, which only renamed the maritime regions controlled by the United States — and not the entire gulf.
The Trump administration is well within its right to rename its own territory but the maritime zones that are under the control of Mexico or Cuba cannot be relabeled by the United States or anyone else, she said. “We would have no business in telling them to rename a state, a mountain, or a lake,” she added.
In February, Cris Turner, the vice president for government affairs and public policy at Google, sent a letter to the Mexican government justifying the change and confirming that people using Google Maps in Mexico would continue to see Gulf of Mexico.
“This is consistent with our normal operating procedure to reflect on our platforms geographic names prescribed by different authoritative government sources,” the letter said, including in places where those sources “may differ.”
The next day, Mexico’s foreign ministry said in another letter to Mr. Turner that relabeling the entire gulf, even for American users only, “exceeds the powers of any national authority or private entity.” Mexico, the ministry said, would take any legal action it deemed appropriate.
Ms. Sheinbaum did not say on Friday when or where exactly her administration brought the lawsuit against Google but she added that there already had been a “first resolution.” A spokesman for Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The name “Gulf of Mexico” came nearly 300 years before Mexico — which lays claim to most of the gulf — became an independent country, and it has appeared on maps for centuries. Mexicans and Cubans have expressed annoyance, defiance, confusion and amusement to Mr. Trump’s executive order, but they agree on one thing: their part will continue being the Gulf of Mexico.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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