Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez has successfully run for Congress 17 times. She now points her feet in a new direction: tackling the Camino de Santiago.

Velázquez has already built up her stamina walking all over the Capitol complex, but she doesn’t take the journey lightly. “I will train,” she said of the future trip. “It’s a challenge, but I love those types of challenges.”

The New York Democrat announced in November that she won’t seek reelection, ending more than three decades in the House. Her first role in Congress came much earlier, however, when she worked as a special assistant to former Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.

“I started in a district office in Brooklyn handling immigration cases, and 33 years later, I’m still fighting for the same communities and the same issues,” she said.

During her congressional tenure, she built up seniority on the Small Business Committee and has served as the top Democrat since 1998. She’s most proud of her work there helping expand access to capital and federal contracts for small businesses owned by women, minorities and veterans, she said.

Her other legacy is her mentorship of young politicians, many of whom now serve in elected office in New York City. “I always knew it was important for me to nurture Latinas and Latinos and to show them it’s not enough to criticize or complain. You need to step up and engage and organize,” said Velázquez, who herself was the first Puerto Rican woman ever elected to Congress.

Velázquez sat down with Roll Call this month to talk about what she’ll miss (representing her community in the House, she said) and what she won’t (the constant traveling).

“There’s so much turmoil going on: overbooked flights, coming home, going back, and packing, unpacking,” she said. “That I will not miss.”

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

Q: What is your first memory of politics?

A: I grew up in Puerto Rico, and my father, Benito, worked in the sugarcane fields. He was an activist, organizing the workers to demand better treatment. And I remember him standing in a flatbed truck in the yard, and a lot of people listening to him, and that really mesmerized me, the power of his words. 

He became very active in the political party that remained in power for 24 years that was founded by the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín. So politics was part of our lives growing up, and sitting at the dinner table, the conversation always was about workers’ rights, about the conditions in the fields, about what was fair and what wasn’t. 

Q: You spent a year working for Ed Towns in 1983, after teaching college courses in New York City. How did you get that job?  

A: Ed Towns was campaigning for Congress, and he met me, and I was quite feisty and asking him questions about fair representation. The district where he was running was basically designed to increase Latino representation, but more than one Latino was running, and they split the vote. 

Towns got elected — but the natural thing for him was to invite me to join his staff, which he did.

I worked on Latino issues — whether it was housing, immigration or bilingual education — going into forums, listening to the people. I told Ed, “Look, you’ve gotta show up. They need to feel that you are seeing them.” 

Q: You went on to serve on the New York City Council, worked for the government of Puerto Rico and then eventually ran for Congress yourself.

A: By the time I decided to run for Congress, I was known in the community. We were invisible in New York [back then]; we had the numbers, the Puerto Rican community, but we didn’t have much power. I knew what we needed was to launch a voter registration campaign that I created. It was known as Atrévete, and we registered more than 250,000 Puerto Ricans, and that changed the political landscape.

Throughout all that, I brought young people with me. I always believed it was my responsibility, as an activist or as an elected official, to nurture the next generation of leaders.

Q: Tell me about that next generation, what some have called your political “godchildren.” 

A: Here in Brooklyn, some of the young people were very frustrated with the Democratic political machine, so they created what’s called the New Kings Democrats. 

I saw how hungry they were about organizing and impacting the political process. And two of those young people were Lincoln Restler, who today is a councilman, and Antonio Reynoso, who’s the borough president of Brooklyn and also running for my seat. 

Q: You’ve now endorsed Reynoso and pushed back against Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s support for a fellow democratic socialist, Claire Valdez.

A: I made a decision early on that it was not up to me to put a finger on the scale, and I wanted it to be organic. But the mayor got involved with his own candidate, and then at that point, I decided that I’ve spent my public service career building a bench, because I knew that I would not be staying in this position forever. And I wanted to make sure that, out of that bench, we will have a successor chosen by the voters.

Q: How have your views evolved on Puerto Rico’s status?

A: Back then, when I was working for Ed Towns, I didn’t think the current status was a colonial status. 

But the Supreme Court, in different cases, has concluded that the U.S. Congress has total jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, and the fact that Congress created a fiscal board to deal with the public debt of Puerto Rico, all that educated me. And today I say we have a moral obligation, as a country that wants to liberate other countries or impose liberation: What about our own backyard? What about Puerto Rico? 

We can’t be lecturing about democracy when we still have millions of subjects: 3.2 million Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and another 6 million that were forced to migrate to the United States because the economic conditions are such that they were hopeless. 

My position today is that the most important responsibility of Congress is to provide a vehicle for the people of Puerto Rico to determine their political future, what type of relationship they want with the United States. 

Q: What else has changed since your first job in politics?

A: This month I went to a Ramadan celebration in my district, in Queens, and it was just a beautiful moment — not only to break bread with them, but when I walked through that door, they were talking about registering to vote. 

I remember how difficult it was 45 years ago to get people to come to a meeting to discuss voter registration because they were paying more attention to the politics of their own homeland. You know, Puerto Ricans, they were paying more attention to what was happening in Puerto Rico, and the same was true with some of the Central Americans. 

But when I went to that room this month, people were doing voter registration, discussing how important it was, even when they are suffering. They are in pain because of the anti-Muslim hatred that is going on, but they believe they can get engaged politically.