Mexican President Sheinbaum Proposes Calling the U.S. Southwest ‘Mexican America’

From Mexico News Daily / January 8, 2025

A day after Donald Trump announced his intention to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, President Claudia Sheinbaum proposed calling the United States — or at least the country’s southwest — “Mexican America.”

“Why don’t we call [the United States] Mexican America, it sounds nice, right?” Sheinbaum said at her Wednesday morning press conference. “It does, doesn’t it?” the president added with a smile.

She noted that the Constitution of Apatzingán, which was created during the Mexican War of Independence, referred to territory now known as the United States as Mexican America.

At the time of the document’s creation in 1814, large parts of what is now the southwestern United States were still under Spanish control. Mexico, when it became an independent country in 1821, was much larger than it is today, as its territory included all or part of several modern-day U.S. states.

“The Constitution of Apatzingán was of Mexican America. So we’re going to call it Mexican America,” Sheinbaum said, as she gestured toward an old map showing modern-day United States territory referred to as Mexican America.

“It sounds nice, right?” she said again, riffing on Trump’s declaration that the name “the Gulf of America” has a “beautiful ring to it.”

The name ‘Gulf of Mexico’ is internationally recognized, Sheinbaum says. “Obviously the name ‘Gulf of Mexico’ is recognized by the United Nations,” Sheinbaum told reporters. She later said that the Gulf of Mexico has been known as such since at least 1607.

“In addition, it’s recognized internationally,” Sheinbaum said. The president appeared to get a kick out of her history presentation during Wednesday’s press conference, evening the score on Trump’s recent territorial claims.

During a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday, Trump said that the Gulf of Mexico is “ours” and asserted that the United States does “most of the work there.”

“… We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring. That covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate, it’s appropriate,” the U.S. president-elect said.

Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard dismissed the possibility that the name of the body of water could be or would be changed, telling reporters on Monday that the Gulf of Mexico will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico for at least the next 30 years.