January 20, 2021

Jennifer Lopez Broke Into Spanish During Her Inauguration Performance, and We Are Here for It

The Pledge of Allegiance has never sounded so good.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

There’s a lot to say about the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, but I just want to pause for a second to soak up one of the many moments that signaled to many of us that change is coming to the White House: Jennifer Lopez speaking Spanish during her performance of “This Land Is Your Land” and “America the Beautiful.” 

“¡Una nación, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos!” JLo called out toward the end of her performance, reciting the last lines of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish before turning back to her big finish.

Seeing a Puerto Rican woman say those words at a presidential inauguration felt especially significant after the constant attacks on Latinx and immigrant communities by Trump’s White House. For the last four years, the man in the highest office of the land, along with his white supremacist and racist underlings, have vilified Latinos. It’s not hard to draw a direct line from their language to the kind of violence we saw in El Paso in 2019, when 22 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart. There was, after all, very little in the obscene manifesto from the racist killer that didn’t appear regularly in public discourse, including in speeches by Trump.  

So perhaps it was no surprise that many folks on Twitter deeply felt the significance of hearing Spanish spoken at the inauguration, especially since it came shortly after we watched the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, swear in Kamala Harris as the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first South Asian to become vice president. 

It might not technically have been the first time Spanish was spoken at an inauguration—Dr. Luis Leon addressed then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden in his 2013 inaugural benediction: “Señor Presidente y Vice Presidente, que Dios os bendiga todos sus dias”—but today, as Trump leaves the White House and his supporters watch a woman shout in Spanish in the middle of the presidential transition, I’m going to rejoice in this moment. Because this land is all was made for all of us. 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate