The Gulf of America may be facing an identity crisis in Google maps after Mexico filed suit this week against the tech giant for changing the name of the body of water.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the lawsuit on Friday and wants the oceanic region’s name restored to the Gulf of Mexico. President Donald Trump changed the name with an executive order as one of his first pieces of business when he took office for the second time.
The order reportedly only carries authority within the United States.
Sheinbaum threatened to sue Google in February. She provided no details in Friday’s announcement in terms of the legal basis for the suit.
In February, however, the Mexican president argued that Trump’s name change decree should be restricted to the “continental shelf of the United States” because Mexico still controls much of the Gulf.
“We have sovereignty over our continental shelf,” she said at the time.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Ministry has also been hitting Google with letters that urged its map service not to relabel the body of water.
Trump signed the gulf order on his first day back in the White House. The United States and Mexico each have long coastlines along the oceanic basin.
Fox News reported:
Mexico has argued that the Gulf of America label should only apply to the part over the U.S. continental shelf. The U.S. has control over about 46% of the gulf, Mexico controls about 49% and Cuba controls about 5%, according to Sovereign Limits, a database of international boundaries. The gulf appears in Google Maps as the Gulf of America within the U.S., as the Gulf of Mexico within Mexico and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) everywhere else.
The body been called the Gulf of Mexico for more than four centuries. But Google made the change for U.S. users shortly after the President’s order, stating it has a “longstanding practice” of changing names when updated by government sources.
Sheinbaum’s lawsuit comes after House Republicans passed the Gulf of America Act in a 211-206 vote on May 8, the first step in turning Trump’s order into a difficult-to-reverse U.S. law. The legislation now heads to the Senate.
Google has yet to comment on the lawsuit.
Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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