Victoria Gonzalez/Vaquero Radio
One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders aims to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, causing immense controversy nationwide.
UTRGV Political Science Professor Mark Kaswan mentioned differences in names throughout the world is normal, but changing the name of the gulf is disrespectful to Mexico.
“Obviously, it’s an insult to the people of Mexico,” Kaswan said. “… The geographic elements like mountains and rivers and gulfs have different names depending on where you are. So, that’s not unusual. For example, what we call [it the] Rio Grande. In Mexico, [it] is called the Rio Bravo. So, it’s not that unusual for different people [to] use different names for the same things.”
UTRGV Sophomore Amber Martinez said the change in name takes away Mexican history.
“I feel like for the Mexicans, he’s just taking something away from them that’s a part of their history,” Martinez said.
Kaswan said the change in name reflects on the history throughout time and Trump does not have the power to rename the gulf.
“My belief is that it actually has to be an act of Congress,” he said. “Other landmarks can be renamed because a lot of the landmarks honestly already erase the history. A lot of the names of streams and mountains, rivers and so on, were given names by European settlers. And, we don’t know, or they ignored, or didn’t know what the indigenous names for those places were and so, the existing names that we have for a lot of things already are reflective of the colonial history.”
Attempts to recover pre-colonial history and rename things have already happened, such as Mount McKinley in Alaska being renamed to Denali, which was its indigenous name.
Kaswan said places that do not have their own names are always given by people and one of the things about the world is that people change over time.
UTRGV Political Science Professor Alvaro Corral said Trump has the potential to change the name if he wanted to.
“My sense is that he may very well have that capacity to do so,” Corral said. “Executive [orders direct] this change to occur [and] that decision would then have to be made by the office, which is called the U.S Board of Geographic Names.”
The U.S Board of Geographic Names is a department under the Secretary of Interior.
“That is in charge of federal lands and managing federal lands like national parks and so, my understanding is that whoever President Trump names as the Department of the Interior Secretary would then sort of be the point person to direct this office within their department to make this change on U.S. maps,” Corral said.
Kaswan said Trump’s proposals are in place to distract people from bigger issues.
“The scope and scale of the problems that the Trump administration represents, [the] kind of damage that it can do to I think to American society, the renaming of things is way down on the list,” he said. “What he’s going to do to programs that protect the environment, what he’s going to do to promote programs that assist low-income people, what he’s going to do to the immigrant community in this country are far more important than renaming things. And in some ways, this idea of renaming things is a ploy on his part to take attention away from the real damage that could be done by some of his proposals.”
UTRGV sophomore Pamela Sandoval said Trump should focus on bigger issues.
“He should be spending his time on more important subjects, especially since he [is in office],” Sandoval said. “So, I feel like he should really take a stand on the things that matter and obviously, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to, what is it, the Gulf of America, it sounds pretty ridiculous. I believe that he thinks [he can change the name], but there [are] a lot of things that he promised before that he would, you know, try to change or implement, but he was never really able to do that. And I mean, that’s the whole purpose of us having the different branches in our government.”
This is Jasmin Espinosa for Vaquero Radio.
