No sooner was Donald Trump sworn in as president of the United States than he tackled the most pressing issues of the day, like changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. “Beautiful ring” to it, he said.
Did I, as a semi ex-pat (six months in Mexico, six up north) somehow overlook reports of people thronging the streets of New York, Atlanta and L.A. chanting “Gulf of America!” or, inevitably, “G.O.A.!” for short?
A careful review of recent media revealed no such movement.
The only thing of interest I found was the reaction of the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who proposed changing the name of all of North America to Mexican America, as it was called in a map from the 1600s which she displayed during her Jan. 8 presser with a sly smile.
The only problem with the past is that, like with the Bible, anyone, the devil included, can quote it for their own purpose. Nothing good comes of reaching too far into the past for claims to territory, as the Middle East all too clearly shows.
It was then that I remembered a flash of insight I had several years ago in Quito, Ecuador, when standing in the main square and looking at all the passersby. I realized: But, we’re all Americans! The whole hemisphere!
The United States makes a mistake in aggregating to itself the exclusive title of America when there are at least three: North, Central and South. Since all three Americas touch the body of water in question, it should be called The Gulf of the Americas. Not singular but plural.
And maybe out of that plurality a certain unity could emerge, in time, as it did in Europe where countries that hated each other for centuries joined forces and created the European Union. A more self-aware Western Hemisphere could find better and better ways to exchange goods, services and ideas, and, in time, might even unite into The United States of the Americas. That too has a sort of “beautiful ring” to it.
Richard Lourie is a writer who lives in San Miguel de Allende, GTO
