Biography

The third of seven children, Sister Irene Muñoz was born in 1936 and grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa. After completing her training as a registered nurse, she joined the Congregation of the Humility of Mary (CHM) in 1956. In 1967, she asked to be placed in Muscatine, Iowa, a Mississippi River town with a significant population of Mexican American agricultural laborers who came each year from Texas to work in the tomato fields near the Heinz Corporation’s Muscatine canning facility. Sister Irene Muñoz advocated for a child labor law that would restrict children under the age of fourteen from working in the fields. Together with her sister, Sister Molly Muñoz, Sister Irene worked closely with Juan Cadena, director of the Muscatine Migrant Committee, to provide medical care for agricultural laborers in Iowa. A grant from the Department of Health and Human Services helped Sister Irene and her colleagues establish mobile dental and health clinics and bilingual education programs. She was a founding member of the Midwest Council of La Raza, an organization that advocated for the rights of Latinos in the Midwest. After fifteen years in Muscatine, Sister Irene moved to Ottumwa, where she continued her advocacy work with new generations of Latino men and women employed in Iowa’s meatpacking industry.

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