House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, speaking with Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) after a ceremonial swearing of at the United States Capitol on Nov. 12, 2025, following the official swearing in on the House floor on Wednesday, Nov. 11. 2025.

WASHINGTON – The granddaughter of a bracero, who waited 50 days to take her seat in Congress, Rep. Adelita Grijalva stepped to the podium on the House floor and told her colleagues, "Our democracy works when everyone has a voice."

“Este momento es histórico para nuestra comunidad,” Grijalva said in Spanish, offering no translation to her hundreds of colleagues on the House floor. “Es un honor ser la primera latina en representar a Arizona en el congreso.” (“This is a historic moment for our community,” she said. “It is an honor to be the first Latina to represent Arizona in Congress.)

During her roughly five-minute speech, Grijalva seamlessly switched between English and Spanish, a commonality for many who grew up along the U.S.-Mexico border, when speaking to her colleagues while also directing some of her remarks to the Latino community.

Code-switching is the practice of selectively switching between languages or dialects during a conversation, a phenomenon that's deeply familiar to bilingual and multilingual people in the U.S.

Grijalva, who won a special election to replace Rep. Raúl Grijalva, her late father, is the first Latina – and “first Chicana,” as she said — to represent the state of Arizona in Congress. Though she is the first, she said she won’t be the last.

“Les aseguro que aunque sea la primera, no será la última,” she said in Spanish to a smattering of applause, again withholding a translation to the packed chamber. Her message, seemingly to those not in the room, but instead to the next Latina to take up the mantle.

She also spoke directly to her family: her three children, Adelina, Raúl and Joaquín, who were seated in the chamber, as well as her husband Sol, and her mother Ramona.

“Muchas gracias por tu apoyo y tu amor,” she said to them in Spanish. (“Thank you so much for your support and your love.”)

Her message wasn’t just to her family or the Latino community. Before the packed chamber, she transitioned into being a congressmember.

“We need to fight for our immigrant communities and veterans,” she said to her colleagues. “We need to stand up for our public schools, children and educators. We need to respect tribal sovereignty and our environment. We need to stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, because that's what the American people expect us to do. Fight for them.”

She said in English, not Spanish, that she was concerned about the harm caused by the shutdown, by overreach by the executive branch and about ICE agents sweeping people up without cause.

Grijalva also pledged during her remarks to sign the discharge petition "right now" to release more files related to the late disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. House Democrats on Nov. 12 released bombshell emails where Epstein wrote that President Donald Trump "spent hours at my house" with one of Epstein's victims and allegedly "knew about the girls.”

But in the closing of her remarks, the woman who'd waited for seven weeks to enter the workplace as House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to bring Congress back in session due to the government shutdown and join her colleagues, offered one final message to her community: “Adelante, mi gente.”

Go forward, my people.

This article has been updated to add new information.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Arizona's first Chicana representative has been sworn in. She's going to code-switch.

Reporting by Rebecca Morin, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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