Trump vs. Gulf of Mexico | Reviews

This month, the president-elect of the United States during a frenzied press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Donald Trump announced final review for revising the world map: “We’re going to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America with its beautiful ring.”

He continued to repeat affirming: “It covers many areas, the American Gulf. What a beautiful name.”

Stretching along much of Mexico’s eastern coast and bordering five southern US states, the Gulf of Mexico is a major international hub for shipping, fishing, oil drilling, and other commercial activities. This is how the body of water was baptized more than four centuries ago Before the US or Mexico existed.

Of course, unilateral renaming of the bay by the US president would not require the approval of Mexico or any other country. Includes additional cartographic corrections made by a recent leader He captured the Panama Canalwrestling away from control Greenland and attachment Canada.

Aside from the “beautiful ring” Trump has revealed in the Gulf of Mexico’s pending new name, the proposed move is consistent with his track record of extreme hostility toward Mexico, which he has disproportionately “organized.”attackers” and other criminals. Speaking of “beautiful”, Trump repeatedly demanded that Mexico “implement the bill” during his first term as president.big, beautiful wall” he meant to be erected on the US-Mexico border.

Indeed, Trump relentlessly blames the US’s neighbor to the south for the flow of “illegal” migrants and drugs to the north – as if US demand for illegal substances and bilateral US habit of destroying other people’s countries nothing to do with drug trafficking and enhancing migration. Nor, certainly, the economic of the United States to trust undocumented and exploited labor play any part in the equation.

Never one to miss an opportunity for repeated hypocrisy, Trump added the following warning To the Gulf of Mexico announcement at Mar-a-Lago: “And Mexico must not allow millions of people to pour into our country.” In any case, the rebranding of the bay will certainly put the Mexicans in their place.

At the very least, the Gulf of America project is less invasive than previous ideas from Trump’s brain. Missile fire at Mexico to fight drug cartels – organizations that owe their existence to the simultaneous demands of the United States and criminalization of drugs.

The noise about the name change is also, you know, a convenient distraction from the pressing issues at hand — which is what Trump’s signature bombastic xenophobia is all about in the first place.

Far-right US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one, wasted no time heeding Trump’s call to arms. Just two days after the Mar-a-Lago press conference in Florida, he introduced a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico in accordance with the president-elect’s wishes.

as political website The Hill, the bill would “direct the chairman of the Board on Geographic Names under the secretary of the interior to rename all federal documents and maps within 180 days of the law’s enactment.” Greene added his persuasive sales pitch: “This is our bay. The legal name is the Gulf of America, and the whole world should refer to it.”

As it is known, this is not the first time that US politicians have proposed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Associated Press article He recalls an episode in 2012 when a member of the Mississippi State Legislature introduced a bill to name parts of the watershed that abutted Mississippi’s beaches as “America’s Gulf”—“the bill’s author was later named. “joke”.

Meanwhile, a bit further down the regional chart, the Gulf of Mexico played host to another horrific example of imperial arrogance in 1914 under the watch of US Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum has a website remembered that year’s “Tampico Incident,” named after the port city in Tamaulipas state on the Gulf of Mexico, where “American warships were sitting ashore to protect American oil interests.”

The previous year, a coup had taken place against Mexican President Francisco I Madero with the help of the US ambassador to Mexico, leading to the rise of General Victoriano Huerta. By 1914, Huerta, the new US ambassador to Mexico, was supporting the opposition, his forces had the audacity to arrest nine US sailors, and a fleet of American warships continued to sit innocently on the coast.

In a version of the incident provided by the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, “the commander of U.S. forces in the area demanded a 21-gun salute and apology from Huerta after the sailors were quickly released.” The Mexican government rejected these demands, and “President Wilson used the events as a reason to ask Congress for authorization for an armed invasion of Mexico.”

And voila: “Events soon led to the occupation of (the port city of) Veracruz by US forces.”

In other words, there are many reasons why people might oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

While Trump’s insistence on behaving like a caricature of himself makes it easy to paint him as some kind of aberration in US foreign policy, at the end of the day it’s imperialism plain and simple — and that’s something you just can’t do. change the name.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.