Velázquez was born in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico on March 28, 1953. She grew up in Yabucoa in a small house on the Río Limón, one of nine children. Her father Don Benito Velazquez was a poor worker in the sugarcane fields who became a self-taught political activist and the founder of a local political party. Political conversations at the dinner table focused on workers' rights. Her mother was Dona Carmen Luisa Serrano.
Velázquez attended public schools and skipped three grades as a child. She became the first in her family to graduate high school. She became a student at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras at age 16. In 1974, she received a degree in political science, magna cum laude, and became a teacher. While in college, Velázquez was a supporter of Puerto Rican independence; by the time she ran for Congress in 1992, Velázquez no longer addressed the issue, "saying that it must be left up the Puerto Rican people. "
In 1976, Velázquez received an M. A. in political science from New York University. Velázquez then returned to Puerto Rico to teach, serving as a professor of political science at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao 1976 to 1981.
She received her first taste of New York City politics in the early 1980s. In 1983 she served as special assistant to former U. S. Representative Edolphus Towns, a Democrat from Brooklyn. As a special assistant, Velázquez was in charge of immigration issues, and part of her job included testifying before Congress on immigration legislation. In 1984, she was appointed to the New York City Council, filling the vacancy left when former councilman, Luis Olmedo, was convicted on charges of federal conspiracy and attempted extortion. At the age of 31, Velázquez became the first Latina to serve on the council.
After losing her council seat in the next election in 1986, Velázquez returned to Puerto Rico to serve as the national director of the Migration Division Office of the Department of Labor and Human Resources of Puerto Rico until 1989. In that year the governor of Puerto Rico appointed Velázquez secretary of the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States, a cabinet-level position that functions as a major link between Puerto Rico and the U. S. government. Responsible for the New York City headquarters and four regional offices, Velázquez advised the Puerto Rican government on Puerto Rico's public policy and its commitment to the Puerto Rican community in the United States. She exercised her political influence in 1989 when Hurricane Hugo devastated Puerto Rico. Velázquez personally called General Colin Powell, head of the joint chiefs of staff, and shortly after, the commonwealth received a promise of federal assistance. During her tenure as secretary, Velázquez also led successful voter registration drives that led to the registration of more than 200, 000 voters in Puerto Rican communities in the Northeast and Midwest; and in 1991 she initiated Unidos contra el sida (United Against AIDS ), a project to fight the spread of AIDS among Puerto Ricans.
Velázquez's close ties with the Puerto Rican government came under scrutiny during her 1992 bid for Congress. Her critics charged she was more concerned with Puerto Rican politics than with the problems of her constituents--an accusation she repeatedly denied. During the campaign, it was disclosed that Velázquez, while working for the Puerto Rican government, had personally supported the pro-commonwealth position in the fierce ongoing debate over the island's colonial status. During the race, she took a neutral stance on whether Puerto Rico should become a state or nation or continue as a commonwealth. "My responsibility as a member of Congress is to support whatever pledge Puerto Ricans make to resolve the situation, " she told Newsday. Acknowledging that she is concerned about Puerto Rico, she related to a Newsday reporter during the campaign: "I say that, yes, we have been oppressed and disenfranchised for too long. "
Velázquez's bid for Congress came at a time of national efforts to bring Hispanics and other minorities to the polls. The 12th Congressional District was one of nine new districts created in 1992 to increase minority voting power under the Voting Rights Act. The district includes a patchwork of Hispanic neighborhoods in three boroughs, including Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights in Queens, the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and Williamsburg, Bushwick, Sunset Park, and East New York in Brooklyn. According to the New York Times, the average income in the district is $22, 500, more than $10, 000 less than the state average. Some 22 percent of the people are on public assistance, and 27 percent are non-citizens. While a majority of the district's population is Hispanic--including Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, and emigrants from other Spanish-speaking countries--the region also includes whites, blacks, and Asian Americans.
Former Representative Solarz's Brooklyn district, which was heavily Jewish, was dissolved by the redistricting process. As a non-Hispanic, Solarz was criticized for seeking to represent a district designed for minority leadership. But he insisted that he was the best person for the job. "I categorically reject that only a black can represent a black district, or a Hispanic an Hispanic district, " he told the New York Times. Although Solarz was a respected foreign policy expert in Congress, he was one of many legislators caught in the House bank scandal in the early 1990s, after it was revealed that he had written 743 overdrafts, according to the New York Times.
The 1992 Democratic primary in the 12th district was a bitter battle, pitting five Hispanic candidates against the popular Solarz, a nine-term Congressman. Velázquez ran an old-fashioned, grassroots campaign, pounding the pavement, making phone calls, and garnering support from family and friends. She could not afford much campaign literature or television advertisements. Although she raised just a fraction of Solarz's campaign fund of over $2 million, she had the endorsements of New York City Mayor David Dinkins, the Hispanic union leader Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199 of the Drug, Hospital and Health Care Workers Union, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Dinkins's support was in part a political thank-you for Velázquez's 1989 voter registration efforts, which helped Mayor Dinkins win the Hispanic vote in the mayoral election.
Still, with four Hispanic opponents, one of her biggest challenges was to unite the district's diverse and politically fractured Hispanic community. Not only did Velázquez have to prove that she could represent all Hispanics in her district--not just the Puerto Ricans--she also had to fight the prejudice that often separates Puerto Ricans raised on the island from those with roots on the mainland. Even Velázquez's supporters describe her as controversial. "I think that Nydia just provokes very strong opinions of love and hate from people because she's so passionate herself, " said Luis A. Miranda, Jr. , president of the Hispanic Federation of New York City, in an interview with the New York Times.
Velázquez won the September 15 primary. Soon after, she returned to Puerto Rico and her hometown, where she was given a hero's welcome. According to an account in the New York Times, she rode into Yabucoa in a pickup truck, accompanied by Mayor Angel Luis Ramos and a state senator. A loudspeaker proclaimed: "She's back! Our Nydia Velázquez, who will be the first Puerto Rican woman in Congress, is back in Sugartown!" Velázquez told the crowd that she dedicated her victory to her mother and the women of Puerto Rico. In an interview with Newsday, Ramos commented, "She represents a good example for the children. She came from a poor family and went to public school. "
The low point of the 1992 campaign came in early October, when an anonymous source sent information to news organizations detailing Velázquez's attempted suicide and hospitalization the previous year. The incident was given much attention by the New York Post, which broke the story, and spread to the national media. Velázquez never denied the charges. Instead, she held a press conference where, surrounded by friends and family, she acknowledged that she had suffered serious depression as the result of personal problems, including her mother's illness and a brother's drug addiction. "In 1991, in a troublesome period of my life, I attempted to commit suicide, " said Velázquez, as reported by the New York Times. "It was a sad and painful experience for me, and one I thought was now in the past. " She noted that she was "appalled" and "outraged" that privileged medical information in the form of confidential hospital records had been released to the public, in violation of state law.
Velázquez's supporters must have recognized their candidate as a survivor who had overcome personal adversity and proven her potential to lead their communities. Velázquez, at the age of 39, defeated both Republican and independent challengers in the November election, taking more than three-quarters of the vote. At her election-night party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, surrounded by "Fair Housing" signs, Velázquez said, in Spanish, that her victory was important for herself, her parents, and her people in the 12th District. "For you, I'm going to fight to gain better jobs, better lives, and better opportunities, " she said.
Velázquez also plans to prove that Hispanic women can serve proudly in the political arena. "We are the ones who go out and collect signatures, but when it came to the final process, we were not good enough to run for office, " said Velázquez in USA Today. She is one of 47 female representatives in the 103rd Congress. "New blood is good, " she told the New York Times on election day. Along with providing a new voice for Hispanics in Congress, she pledged to work with other minority and progressive members of Congress to improve the quality of life for all people in the nation's inner cities.
On December 11, 1995, the New York Times published a letter that Velásquez had written to the editor on the subject of bilingual education. She claimed that since Spanish-speaking citizens are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, the effects of English-only legislation would be problematic, as people would be unable to understand warnings in emergency situations and fail to receive immunizations against contagious diseases, which would endanger public health. Furthermore, she asserted that "Multilingualism is a tremendous resource to the United States because it permits improved communications and cross-cultural understanding. On the other hand, she concluded, "English-only measures undermine the economic competitiveness of the United States as well as represent an unwarranted governmental restriction on self-expression. "
As a Puerto Rican woman raised in a hardworking rural household with few modern conveniences, Velázquez brings a unique perspective to national politics.
Among her firsts are: the first Hispanic woman to serve on the New York City Council; the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress; the first woman Ranking Democratic Member of the House Small Business Committee. Velázquez became the first woman to chair the United States House Committee on Small Business in January 2007 as well as the first Hispanic woman to chair a House standing committee.
As a non-traditional politician, Velázquez does not fit the standard conservative or liberal labels; instead, she often calls herself progressive. She hopes to concentrate her congressional career on the problems confronting her urban district, including jobs, the economy, child care, and housing. She supports federal construction projects to create jobs and government loans to help small businesses. Shortly before her election-day victory, Velázquez told the New York Post that she wanted to improve the educational system and stem the tide of crime and drugs. On the international front, she opposes Jewish settlements on the West Bank and favors increased economic aid to Latin America.
