By Some Random WPS News Reporter

June 29, 2025 | 1000

Re: Long-Term Validity of the Gulf Naming: From Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America

I’m sitting here on the veranda of some unnamed guild villa in the tropics, half-blinded by the glare off the pool and the 13 young women in bikinis debating whether it’s too early for more margaritas.

There’s a gentle breeze coming in from the Gulf of America.

Yes, that’s what we’re calling it now.

Don’t bother checking Google Maps just yet—it’s not there. But give it time. With enough PR flacks and a big enough Defense Department budget, I’m sure we can fix that little detail.

Because apparently, it’s not enough to pump oil out of the seabed or park half the Navy there—we also need to slap our name on it like a teenager spraying graffiti on someone else’s wall.

A recent piece I read tries to sell this branding heist with all the subtlety of a used-car salesman in a cheap suit:

“The decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America raises interesting questions about historical validity and cultural context.”

Oh, fascinating.

“Despite its long-standing designation, the transition can be regarded as a necessary and logical acknowledgment of the evolving identity of the United States.”

Necessary and logical for who? Not for Mexico, obviously, whose name is literally on the place.

Not for the Indigenous peoples whose history predates both Mexico and the U.S. by millennia.

But sure—it’s logical for the Pentagon’s mapmakers and whichever senator wants to make his reelection campaign about who’s toughest on Mexico this week.

Let’s be clear: “Gulf of Mexico” is an old colonial name. Spanish colonial. The essay tries to sound woke about that, as if renaming it to “America” is anti-colonial.

But you don’t decolonize a name by taking out Mexico and putting in America.

That’s like breaking into your neighbor’s house, painting over their name on the mailbox, and calling it “self-determination.”

“This act of renaming can also foster a deeper sense of connection among the surrounding states, encouraging collective responsibility for environmental stewardship.”

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

We’re talking about the same Gulf where chemical companies treat the water table like a spittoon, where oil rigs leak like a sieve, and where storm defenses get funded only after a town drowns.

If renaming it made us better stewards, we’d have done it after the BP spill. We didn’t.

“Moreover, the renaming serves as an educational opportunity.”

That’s one way to put it.

Here’s the curriculum:

  • Lesson 1: Cultural erasure is fine if you do it with PowerPoint slides and smiling press releases.
  • Lesson 2: Geography is a brand, and America is the brand manager.
  • Lesson 3: History is negotiable if you’re the one holding the pen.

But don’t worry—it’s all for inclusivity.

Because nothing says inclusivity like telling your southern neighbor, “You don’t get to have your name on the map anymore. We decided you’re in the way of our narrative.”

The long-term implications? Oh, they’re “multifaceted,” all right.

For one: It’s another brick in the wall of American exceptionalism. The same old Manifest Destiny, but with better fonts.

It pretends that U.S. “identity” is so dominant that it can retroactively claim geography already named for a sovereign neighbor.

And Mexico? Well, they can just take the lesson in stride.

Here’s the part they don’t put in the essay:

This is the logic of empire.

Always has been.

But the breeze is nice, the margaritas are cold, and the bikinis are making their case for distraction.

So by all means—let’s talk about renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Just be honest about what it is:

Not history. Not education.

Just marketing for empire.

APA-Style References

  • Brands, H. W. (2007). The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. Anchor Books.
  • Gonzalez, M. (2011). The Mexican Revolution: A Short History 1910–1940. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
  • Smith, A. (2012). American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. University of California Press.

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