Mexico’s president rejected several of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s assertions about her country and even joked that the United States should be called “Mexican America” after Mr. Trump said the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico used her Wednesday morning news conference to show a world map dating from 1607. The map labeled North America as Mexican America and already identified the Gulf of Mexico as such, 169 years before the United States was founded.
“Why don’t we call it Mexican America? It sounds pretty, no?” Ms. Sheinbaum said while pointing to the map and smiling.
In response to Mr. Trump’s comment that Mexico was “essentially run by the cartels,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters on Wednesday that, “with all due respect,” the president-elect was ill-informed.
“In Mexico, the people rule,” she said. “And we are going to collaborate and understand each other with the government of President Trump, I am sure of it, defending our sovereignty as a free, independent and sovereign country.”
Ms. Sheinbaum also said that Mexico is willing to continue collaborating with the United States on various issues, including immigration containment, security and drug trafficking. “But we are also very interested in stopping the entry of U.S. firearms into Mexico,” she said, adding that about 75 percent of seized guns in Mexican territory are illegally smuggled from the United States.
In 2021, Mexico sued seven U.S. gun manufacturers and one distributor, accusing the companies of complicity in facilitating the flow of weapons to drug cartels. A lower court had dismissed the case. But last year a federal appeals panel ruled that the $10 billion lawsuit could proceed. In October, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case; it will hear arguments in March.
Unlike the United States, Mexico has strict gun control laws, with only one single gun store issuing fewer than 50 permits a year. Gun violence, however, continues to wreak havoc across the country.
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