By Andrew Hay
TAOS, New Mexico, Sept 8 (Reuters) – New Mexicans on Tuesday described President Donald Trump’s suggestion the Democratic-run state be renamed “New America” as an attempt to erase history and culture.
The land of deserts, mountains and high plains featured in Native American tales, epic Spanish poems and cowboy movies has been known as New Mexico for over 450 years.
Trump, a Republican, made the renaming proposal on Sunday as trade negotiations with Mexico ramped up.
In August Trump changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America after trade negotiations with Canada failed. Last year he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America to restore “American Greatness.”
Over a dozen New Mexicans Reuters spoke with saw nothing great about his latest proposal. It was rejected by the state’s Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
“Trump you are crazy, you will not take nothing from us,” said Ethel Yazza, 67, a potter and member of New Mexico’s Santa Clara and Picuris indigenous communities who lives at Picuris Pueblo about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of state capital Santa Fe.
Yazza’s Puebloan people were the first to live in the area named La Nueva Mexico in the 1560s by Spanish explorers who hoped it would have the same riches, and Indigenous people to tax and put to work, as they found around modern-day Mexico City, said New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez.
“New Mexico is a beautiful name, it’s historic, it sounds beautiful, and New America does not,” said the historian, whose family has Spanish, Mexican and Indigenous roots going back generations in northern New Mexico.
After centuries of Spanish rule, the area became part of Mexico in 1821, before the United States invaded and occupied New Mexico three decades later.
Mexican American Jesus Trevizo Martinez saw Trump’s “New America” proposal as an attack on people of Mexican ancestry. New Mexico has the highest proportion of Hispanic and Latino residents of any U.S. state at around 49% of its population.
“He’s doing it out of pure racism,” said the painter and roofer.
Others asked why Trump was not trying to rename states like New York, or New Jersey.
“It’s frightening to the degree that it’s trying to erase our history,” said Larry Cruz, 65, a U.S. Air Force legal administrator originally from Taos County, who voted for Trump in 2024.
The White House has not publicly responded to the criticism and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; editing by Donna Bryson and Stephen Coates)
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