The president of the United States, Donald Trump, insisted this Monday on changing the name of the state of New Mexico to New America, a territory that belonged to Mexico before the American expansion of the 19th century.
In a publication on his Truth Social network, he maintained that the modification “would raise the prestige of the entity and increase the value of the homes and the income of its inhabitants.”
“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!” Trump wrote. He also claimed that the change would make residents feel more proud to salute the American flag and leveled accusations of voter fraud against the state, without presenting evidence.
The president did not detail how the modification would be carried out nor did he announce official measures to promote it. His proposal joins other initiatives to change geographical names, such as calling Lake America to Lake Ontario in Canada and Gulf of America to the Gulf of Mexico.
The proposal evokes the territorial theft of the United States from Mexico, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, in which it forced the Mexican Government to cede a vast territory that included most of today’s California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico, as well as portions of Arizona, Colorado and other states.
Added to that loss was the Sale of La Mesilla, agreed in 1853 during the government of Antonio López de Santa Anna, through which Mexico was forced to give up more than 100 thousand square kilometers south of present-day Arizona and New Mexico in exchange for 10 million dollars. The operation took place in a context of US expansionist pressure and the threat of a new invasion.
