While I do think rjs330 was wrong to previously respond to you without really addressing this point you raise, appealing to an automated translation isn't the greatest defense because... well, even if they've gotten a lot better, automated translations makes errors all the time (not that humans are immune, but automated translation is worse). When companies try cutting corners by trying to translate things via automated translations, they tend to get blowback because the translations are noticeably worse.
Now, the phrase she said was:
"Yo soy guatemalteca con mucho orgullo primero que soy americana."
I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I know it decently well, and the phrase seems off to me. I don't think "primero que" is really grammatically correct here in either interpretation ("before I am American" or "first I am an American"). This seems confirmed, for example, by this (conservative) writer who knows Spanish in National Review:
Who in their right mind voluntarily spends their weekend at a pro-Castro conference alongside a bunch of leftists who quote Che Guevara?
www.nationalreview.com
As tends to happen anytime a “Latino issue” breaks the internet, my phone’s been lighting up like a Sábado Gigante prize wheel with translation requests since last night. This time, the drama comes courtesy of Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who took the stage at a far-left conference in Mexico City last weekend and proudly declared: “Yo soy guatemalteca con mucho orgullo primero que soy americana.”
I get the confusion from my no hablo pals. Her Spanish was mangled. The proper phrasing for such verbal excrement would’ve been “antes de ser americana” — but the meaning was crystal clear: I’m proudly Guatemalan before being American.
Thus it looks to me like, because the Spanish isn't correct, people have been giving various translations based on what they think she was
trying to say. But it definitely
can be interpreted as her saying she was Guatemalan before American.
Snopes, hardly a conservative source, has an article on the subject that notes what I've mentioned:
The Illinois Democratic representative made a statement in Spanish that sparked much debate.
www.snopes.com
The article's discussion of it lines up pretty well with what my own research has told me. It ultiamtely concludes:
Considering this, it is possible she meant to imply she considers herself a proud Guatemalan first and foremost and said exactly what she meant. However, given that Ramirez began her speech in English and switched to Spanish for this brief segment, it is also possible she intended to say she is a proud Guatemalan but considers herself an American first and simply used confusing syntax that led some interpretations astray.
However, if all that was going on was she phrased something incorrectly and that led to people reversing what she was trying to say,
why didn't she just clarify that? As the first article I linked (the National Review one) went on to note:
Some of her defenders now claim she meant the reverse: that she’s American first but proud of her roots. The problem is, that’s not what she said. A sentence like that would’ve been structured a little differently. Still, if it is what she meant, she had a perfectly plausible excuse: “Spanish is my second language. I speak Latinx.”
Instead, she claimed no one would’ve cared if she’d said she was proud to be European, which is obviously absurd. Had John Boehner stood before the EU in Brussels and said, “I’m German-Irish before American,” he would’ve gotten the Tom Hagen treatment.
The fact she didn't simply clarify she was trying to say she was American before Guatemalan (and that poor phrasing led some to the opposite interpretaiton) lends considerable credence to the translation saying she was Guatemalan before American.