Hey, welcome to Latina to Latina, a bustle podcast.

I'm Alicia Menendez.

It's not just about making history.

It is about ensuring we have a seat at the table to get something done, right?

Because I'll tell you what, don't you think it is about time

that we had diversity in the United States Senate?

That was U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Mastow.

In 2016, Donald Trump won by promising to build that wall and made his

infamous comments about Mexico. But that same year, Cortez Mosto became the first ever Latina

elected to the U.S. Senate, a Mexican-American woman. We sat down in the U.S. Capitol to talk about

what it means to her to be the first. We're in the U.S. Capitol. talk about what it means to her to be the first.

We're in the U.S. Capitol.

We are.

Do you still have days where you just drive up to the Capitol and you think, oh, my God, I work here? Every day. Every day. And I tell people, if that changes and I become jaded, then I shouldn't be here. I mean, it is, you know, and I think about it because, you know, my grandparents and my parents, where they've come from, how they've worked so hard to make sure that my sister and I could have an education and succeed.

And then just walking in thinking, oh my goodness, not only do I represent them and all of their hard work, I'm here representing people with a great state of Nevada, right? All the people that I know and love because I've grown up there and want to

fight for. So yes, not only that, it's also very intimidating because then you think about all of

the people before you who've walked these halls, the senators that have walked the halls before you, who sat at the desk before you. And look at, we have a Constitution because of them, a Bill of Rights because of them. We have treaties because of them. I mean, you just go on and on and on, and you can just really think, oh, my goodness, I don't know if I can move because it's so intimidating at times. But I'm just

blessed. I'm so happy I'm here. And yet no one who walked these halls and no one who wrote the

Constitution looked like you and had your life experience in a number of ways, right? I mean,

both in terms of your gender, in terms of your race and ethnicity, in terms of where you

geographically come from in the United

States. Well, we're talking about the Constitution. And so for you then, how do you situate

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