NYSUT celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, with a new poster honoring Nydia M. Velázquez a representative for New York's 7th Congressional District. During her tenure in Congress, she’s made history several times. In 1992, Velázquez became the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1998, she became the first Hispanic woman to serve as a ranking member of a full House committee. In 2006, she made history again when she served as the chair of that same committee, the House Small Business Committee.
Velázquez is a longtime human and civil rights advocate for the Puerto Rican people. In the late 1990s and the 2000s, she was a leader in the successful Vieques movement which sought to stop the United States military from using the inhabited island as a bomb testing ground. The U.S. Navy closed its last remaining base on Puerto Rico in 2004.
Congresswoman Velázquez was named "Woman of the Year" by Hispanic Business Magazine in recognition of her national influence in both the political and business sectors and for her longtime support of minority enterprise.
The poster is available for download in English-language and Spanish-language versions; limited quantities are free for NYSUT members and leaders at the statewide union’s online publications ordering catalog, nysut.org/publications.