PERSON: Nydia Velázquez

U.S. House of Representatives

Member of Congress

Nydia Margarita Velázquez Serrano (born March 28, 1953) is an American politician serving in the United States House of Representatives since 1993. A Democrat from New York, Velázquez chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus until January 3, 2011. Her district, in New York City, was numbered the 12th district from 1993 to 2013 and has been numbered the 7th district since 2013. Velázquez is the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in the United States Congress.

Velázquez was born in the town of Limones in the municipality of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on March 28, 1953. She grew up in a small house on the Río Limones with eight other siblings. Her mother was Carmen Luisa Serrano Medina, and her father, Benito Velázquez Rodríguez, was a low-income worker in the sugarcane fields who became a self-taught political activist and the founder of a local political party; he was also listed as “Black” on the 1940 U.S. census. Political conversations at the Velázquez dinner table focused on workers’ rights.

>> Wikipedia