Jan. 3, 2019 / 5:51 PM GMT
By Suzanne Gamboa and Sandra Lilley
The youngest member, the first South American and the first two Latinas from Texas: With their inauguration on Thursday, a group of Hispanic women made history in Congress.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, enters the nation’s 116th Congress as the youngest to serve in the legislative body. The 29-year-old of Puerto Rican descent stunned the nation when she beat a veteran Democratic incumbent in the primaries with a grassroots campaign focusing on progressive policies such as Medicare for All as well as free higher education or trade school for all. She has publicly said she will oppose her own party’s rules against deficit spending if they take money away from areas such as health care spending.
On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out a picture of her and other incoming women legislators with the phrase ‘Si, se puede,’ (Yes, we can), the words that were first coined by labor activist and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and then immortalized in English by President Barack Obama during his campaign.
One of the other women in the picture is Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, one of two Latinas who are the first to represent the Lone Star State in Congress.
Escobar takes the place of Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and is representing Texas’ 16th congressional district which includes the heavily Latino border area of El Paso. She was previously a county commissioner and county judge.
On Twitter, Escobar took on Trump’s insistence on over $5 billion for a border wall — which has led to the government shutdown — by writing that “the border has never been more secure” and “immigration is lower today than it was a decade ago.” Escobar instead argued for the need to work with Central American countries to address the root causes of migration.
Escobar has also pledged to expand access to healthcare — Texas blocked expanding Medicaid access and other mechanisms under Obama’s Affordable Care Act — as well as improving veterans’ services.
Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, is the other Latina making history as a Texas congresswoman. The former state senator, who will be representing the areas of Houston and Pasadena, Texas, is also a former city controller.
Garcia reminded Twitter users of Thursday’s significance and wrote as one of her hashtags, #LaCongresista. Under her signature issues, she first lists advocating for women, touting her support for health and abortion access and her work to pass a state bill making revenge porn a crime.
Both Escobar and Garcia are Mexican American.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., won a race against Republican Cuban-American congressman Carlos Curbelo and is making history as the first member of Congress of South American descent, as she wrote on Twitter shortly after her election. She came to the U.S. as a young girl from Ecuador and started her career working at non-profits; she’s also a former associate dean at Florida International University.
One of Mucarsel-Powell’s main campaign themes is access to health care. “I started working at the [Florida Atlantic University] College of Health and I understood the issues that our community was facing here in South Florida, which is lack of access, a shortage of doctors, and nurses because they can’t pay for their education,” Mucarsel Powell told NBC News during her campaign.
She said then she would propose increasing funding for community health care programs.
Another Latina entering the 116th Congress is Xochitl Torres-Small, D-N.M., a water-rights attorney who developed connections in rural communities when she helped design a water plan while working for Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, also of New Mexico.
She previously told NBC News her skills as a water attorney would help her transcend partisanship in Congress. With water issues, “you have to accept science and look at every situation … some things you have to take as facts and work with them,” she said.
As she states in her bio, one of Torres-Small’s grandmothers immigrated from Mexico and worked in the fields “to build her American dream.”
Latinos also had some ‘firsts’
Republicans made history with the election of GOP congressman Anthony Gonzalez, who is of Cuban descent and the first Hispanic elected to Congress from Ohio.
Another new face is Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois, who is taking over for Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who is of Puerto Rican descent and is retiring. Garcia is the first Mexican-American to represent Illinois in Congress.
The new Congress will include a total of at least 38 House members and four senators who are Latino — including a few others who are newcomers — according to the official count of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. NALEO still is working to confirm the tally.
FOLLOW NBC LATINO ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.
Carmen Sesin contributed.