Mexico, Gulf of

MEXICO, GULF OF

MEXICO, GULF OF. Bounded by the southern United States, eastern Mexico, and Cuba, this oval-shaped body of water has played a central role in North America's economic and political development. The Gulf of Mexico and its coastal beaches, estuaries, and islands have supplied varied peoples with abundant food and minerals. A warm current, the Gulf Stream, enters the gulf from the Caribbean Sea at the Strait of Yucatán and flows into the Atlantic at the Straits of Florida. The gulf's large mass of warm water shapes weather across the region, creating long growing seasons and violent tropical storms. The 600,000-square-mile gulf has been the site of important trade routes and settlements and a pivotal arena for imperial contests since Europeans first arrived in the Americas.

Diverse native societies once ringed the gulf, including complex Maya and Aztec civilizations in Mesoamerica, and Calusa, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Natchez, and Karankawa peoples in what became the United States. Spain first explored the gulf in voyages by Juan Ponce de León in 1513 and Alonso Alvarez de Pineda in 1519, and colonial outposts such as Havana and Veracruz rapidly followed. The gulf was a Spanish sea for nearly two centuries, and Spanish galleons took great quantities of silver and gold from the region. The French entered the gulf in about 1700, and the heart of their colonial effort was the Mississippi River and New Orleans, founded in 1718.

Imperial rivalries between Spain, France, and England dominated the region in the eighteenth century. The eventual winner, the United States, entered the scene in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. The Americans continued earlier patterns of growing rice, sugar, and cotton using slave labor, and New Orleans became their major gulf port. A powerful desire for new lands led to American acquisition of Florida, completed between 1810 and 1819. Florida and Texas were granted statehood in 1845, and the admission of Texas led to war with Mexico. The American victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848 confirmed the Rio Grande as the western edge of America's Gulf Coast. Expansion along the gulf ended there, as antebellum efforts to purchase Cuba for its sugar plantations and strategic position failed.

The security and stability of the Gulf of Mexico remained a significant foreign policy concern during the twentieth century. In 1898 the American victory in the Spanish-American War gave Puerto Rico to the United States, and Cuba became an American protectorate. The Panama Canal, begun in 1904, made shipping lanes in the gulf even more important. The United States intervened in the region many times in the twentieth century with its greatest focus on its complex Cold War relations with Cuba.

Military tensions in the gulf eased by the beginning of the twenty-first century, but environmental concerns increased as large numbers of Americans built homes along the Gulf or visited its beaches as tourists. In the twenty-first century the Gulf Coast remained a major agricultural region and the site of important fisheries, and after the 1940s it became a leader in oil, natural gas, and petrochemical production. The Gulf of Mexico has rich natural resources, but its many users put its productive waters and fragile coastlines and reefs at risk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gore, Robert H. The Gulf of Mexico: A Treasury of Resources in the American Mediterranean. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1992.

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992.

William C. Barnett

See also Cuba, Relations with ; Mexico, Relations with .