southern hemisphere coordinates displaying in north

[JenMann]

Hello-
seeking any advice. I southern hemisphere coordinates and when I try to map them in my district shapefile they won't match, although when I zoom to the layer and "identify" a point it shows the point with a negative coordinate. I tried to export into a KMZ file to see on google earth and they all ended up in the northern hemisphere. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong if the identify button also shows them as properly listed as a negative number.
ex.
latitude
-12.49819

thanks for any suggestions

[LucasDanzinger]

What coordinate system is defined for your shapefile? If you could, you can upload a subset of your data and give me an example of what your workflow is and I can take a look for you.