Nydia Margarita Velázquez (born 1953), the daughter of a poor sugar-cane cutter, is the first Puerto Rican woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Velázquez, a Democrat, won her seat in Congress in November 1992, after a grueling and controversial Democratic primary that pitted her against longtime incumbent Stephen J. Solarz and a crowded field of Hispanic challengers. Velázquez now represents the 12th Congressional District in New York City, a heavily Democratic and Hispanic district that was created in 1992 to encourage the election of a Hispanic representative. The district of just over 500,000 people encompasses poor and working-class neighborhoods in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. However, because many politicians and officials feel that this district was configured on the basis of race, it is likely that the district will be ruled unconstitutional and redesigned.

As a Puerto Rican woman raised in a...