Comedian Cristela Alonzo was once a young girl in Hidalgo County, living in abject poverty. Her family squatted for years in an abandoned diner.

In the early aughts, as a 20-something, she moved to the Dallas area to be a caregiver for both her sister’s kids and her mother, who had fallen ill. When her mom died in 2002, she turned to comedy to cope with the loss.

One short-lived TV show and two Netflix specials later, Alonzo returns to Dallas on Saturday to tape her third special for the streamer at the Majestic Theatre in downtown.

“I have trouble understanding that I’m playing the Majestic when in 2002, I was sharing a bedroom with my mom in my sister’s house and we slept on the floor because there was no bed,” she says in a recent Zoom call.

The scenic vista of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, where she is on a trip with her brothers, can be seen behind her. After a childhood centered around survival, she’s now been pushing her family to vacation, to learn how to enjoy life, she says.

“Upper Classy,” the name of her upcoming Netflix special, concludes a trilogy that began with “Lower Classy” in 2017 followed by “Middle Classy” in 2022.

As their titles imply, the specials are peppered with jokes about money (or the lack thereof) that are inspired by Alonzo’s own class ascension.

“Being so specific about my life actually made me very relatable to a lot of people,” she says, quipping “you didn’t have to be Latina to know that in my family expiration dates were just suggestions.”

After “Lower Classy,” Alonzo took a hiatus from comedy. “I was sad at the rise of racist ideology — where people spoke it with their chest,” she says, leaning into the camera. “How can I be funny knowing that other people are miserable?”

She redirected her energy toward advocacy and civic engagement, including registering voters in Florida with labor rights leader Dolores Huerta.

Eventually, she returned to writing jokes and touring with material that touched more on “the state of where we were.”

“I didn’t shy away from talking about anything that might make people angry,” she says.

She sees her comedy and activism as intertwined. The attention from the Netflix specials can shine a light on social issues she’s championing, she says.

Reflecting on how far she’s come, Alonzo believes she “will always be the girl that grew up in the diner.”

“It’s a part of my life that when I look back really sets off why I am so active in fighting for immigrants,” she says.

Alonzo’s entry into comedy came around 2003, when she was working an office job at Addison Improv to pay the bills. Her sister had pretended to be a former boss for a reference call so she could get hired, she says.

After watching many live shows at the club, Alonzo decided to enroll in a stand-up class there. The workshops culminated in a graduation performance. “I had so much fun that I was like ‘I’m gonna try to keep doing it until it’s not fun anymore,’” she says.

Ahead of her return to Dallas, Alonzo lights up when talking about the taquerias along Harry Hines Boulevard and how the elote in California pales to how it’s made in Texas.

“Anytime I go back [to Dallas] there’s something about it that makes me feel you pick up where you left off,” she says. “No time has passed in a good way.”