In one of his numerous and high-profile executive orders, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, proposed changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, a name that he described as “very beautiful.” “We are going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which is beautiful and covers a lot of territory. “What a beautiful name, and so appropriate,” he declared to the media on January 7, in which he promised a “new golden era for the United States.” “In a short time we are going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Donald Trump announced again in his inaugural speech this Monday, January 20, unleashing both applause and laughter.
But Donald Trump’s proposal is neither idle nor trivial. To name is to appropriate. Beyond the issue of international law, these types of proposals touch a sensitive nerve regarding history and identity, since the act of changing a name implies, in many cases, rewriting a narrative and redefining the relationship that people have. with that space.
Gulf of Mexico, a Eurocentric name
“It must be taken into account that the names that have been given to many of these places, including the Gulf of Mexico, are Eurocentric. Not pre-Hispanic. One of the first names recorded for the region was “Seno de México.” This term was used by explorers such as Francis Drake, an English pirate, who began calling the gulf “Gulf of Mexico.” However, it is important to note that Drake was not referring to Mexico as a nation, but to Mexico City, which there was already. been taken by the Spanish and was a symbol of their colonial rule. Thus, the name “Gulf of Mexico” reflects a vision of the region seen from the European perspective, where the geographical reference was centered on the city and not on the native cultures,” he explains to WIRED in Spanish, the Master in History from the Xavier Elorriaga Villalobos Ibero-American University.
In fact the name “Mexico” did not exist. Originally, the city was called Tenochtitlán. This is how the colonizers began to call the city “Mexico”, in reference to the Mexicas who inhabited it. This name reflects, in a certain sense, a Eurocentric appropriation, although it can also be seen as an indirect recognition of the Mexica.
Given Trump’s proposal, Claudia Sheinbaum projected in her conference a map from 1607 that showed the territory of northern Mexico and part of the United States merged. “Why don’t we call it ‘Mexican America’? It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Since 1607, the Constitution of Apatzingán spoke of Mexican America. So, why not call it that?” commented the president.
Claudia Sheinbaum assured that her Government will always work in defense of Mexicans who live on the other side of the border.
Sheinbaum also recalled that the Gulf of Mexico is recognized and has been officially registered by international institutions. “I believe that President Trump was given wrong information, making him believe that Felipe Calderón and García Luna were still governing in Mexico. But that is not the case. In Mexico, the people govern,” said Sheinbaum.
In the president’s conference, José Alfonso Suárez del Real, historian and political advisor to the Communication Coordination, explained the origins of the name of the Gulf of Mexico in response to Trump. “Since the 17th century, the Gulf of Mexico, located between Florida and Yucatan, has been recognized as a key point for navigation. Furthermore, the term ‘Mexican America’ already existed before the first settlers arrived in Virginia, that is , at the end of 1607,” said Suárez del Real.
Bosom of Mexico, the name of the era
The Gulf of Mexico was also called “Seno de México” on some ancient maps. “The geographical names of the time not only served to identify territories, but mainly for navigation purposes. Often, they did not reflect true territorial delimitation; European maps of the time only indicated cities, without a clear political or territorial division. In fact, the borders were not so well defined and depended on conventional agreements,” Xavier Elorriaga Villalobos, professor at the Rosario Castellanos University, explains to this magazine. “It is interesting to note that, although the name “Gulf of Mexico” was adopted later, early maps used terms such as “Gulf of New Spain.” It was only in the 19th century, after nations began to delimit their borders, when the use of the term “Gulf of Mexico” was consolidated.
These names were mostly practical geographic references, and the term “Gulf of Mexico” endured for convenience. Despite territorial disputes and changes of dominion, such as the sale of Louisiana from the French to the Spanish and then to the Americans, the name stuck.
The act of naming, an act of appropriation
The Europeans gave the name America to what they wanted to see, but they did so through their own vision of the world. In ‘The Invention of America’, Edmundo O’Gorman reflects on how the notion of “America” was a European construct, that is, it was something created by Europeans after their contact with the continent. O’Gorman maintains that America did not exist as a geographical or cultural concept before the arrival of Europeans. What Europeans did, according to O’Gorman, was “invent” America: they reconfigured everything they found and adapted it to their own categories, ideas, and needs.
“The problem with Europeans is that they tend to see everything from similarity, and it is very difficult for them to accept otherness, difference. This leads them to name and conceptualize everything based on their own references, adapting the unknown to the familiar, Xavier Elorriaga Villalobos explains to WIRED. ”The challenge for them was to understand what is foreign, what is different, without being able to refer to their own conceptual frameworks. In this sense, the act of naming was not only a matter of identification, but of appropriation, a way of making the strange more understandable and manageable from their perspective.”
In fact, the name “America” does not arise as an indigenous name or as a word that previously existed in indigenous cultures. It is a name imposed by the Europeans, derived from Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator, and with the idea that, being an unknown continent, they needed a name to identify it. This “new” continent was not only discovered physically, but reconstructed in the minds of Europeans according to their vision of the world. The concept of the “invention of America” has great implications both for the study of history and for reflection on identity and colonization.
The interesting thing is how in regions like Mexico and Peru there was a kind of cultural mixing, especially in names. Thus, in many places we find a mixture of indigenous, European and, in some cases, hybrid names. “This is clear, for example, in names like “Teotihuacán”, which preserves its indigenous identity, or “San Bartolomé de las Casas”, which reflects the imposition of the Spanish Christian vision. In many cases, names like “San José” appear of the Pyramids”, which show the syncretism between the local and the European”, explains Elorriaga Villalobos.
This phenomenon can also be observed with the Gulf of Mexico. At first, the Spanish called it the Gulf of Mexico, but later renamed it the Gulf of New Spain. At that time, there were no international naming conventions, so each group imposed the name that best suited them according to their own vision of the world. It was not so much a question of ownership, but rather an act of referentiality, of assigning a name that made sense within the cultural and political system of the person who named it.
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