Mexico’s president hits back at Trump over ‘Gulf of America’: ‘We’re going to call it Mexican America’

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum dove into President-elect Trump’s chatter of geopolitical rearrangement, proposing a name change for North America in response to Trump’s musings about the Gulf of Mexico.

In a wide-ranging press conference, Trump expounded on his aspirations of U.S. territorial expansion to Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, and proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

Sheinbaum, in her daily morning press conference, said the body of water shared by Cuba, Mexico and the United States is internationally recognized as the Gulf of Mexico, adding that North America was historically marked on maps as Mexican America, ‘The Hill’ notes.

“I mean obviously ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ the name is recognized by the United Nations, an organism of the United Nations. But next, why don’t we call it ‘Mexican America’? It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Sheinbaum said, waving to a historical map projected on a screen.

“Since 1607,” Sheinbaum added, in an apparent reference to the map. “the Constitution of Apatzingán was for Mexican America, so we’re going to call it ‘Mexican America,’ it sounds nice, doesn’t it? And Gulf of Mexico, well, since 1607 and it’s also recognized internationally.”

Sheinbaum’s constitutional reference pointed to the country’s first proposed founding document after declaring independence from Spain in 1810 — a constitution that was never in effect and mandated, among other things, Catholicism as the official state religion.

The Apatzingán Constitution of 1814 did refer to the budding country’s territory as “América mexicana” pending an “exact demarcation” of the territory that would eventually become Mexico.

And numerous historical maps during the colonial era referred to North America as either “Mexican America,” “Mexicana,” “Septentrional America” or a combination.

One 1544 map designated North America as “Baccalearum” in reference to the abundance of cod along its shores.

In the run-up to his second inauguration, Trump has made a series of controversial statements that seem to fly in the face of international agreements on the permanence of borders, notes ‘The Hill’.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs