City Council Meeting
February 28, 2018
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO:
SECTION 1. Pursuant to an ordinance heretofore passed by the City Council which allows erection of honorary street-name signs, the Commissioner of Transportation shall take the necessary action for standardization of South Morgan Street, from West 18th Street to West 16th Street as "Inez Loredo Street".
DANIEL SOLIS
Alderman, 25,n Ward
SECTION 2. This ordinance shall take effect upon its passage and publication.
INEZ ALVAREZ LOREDO
NOVEMBER 7, 1921 - OCTOBER 7, 2017
INEZ ALVAREZ LOREDO is an icon to many in the Pilsen community and those who had the privilege to know her and work with her, were truly blessed.
She was born on Nov. 7,1921 in Harlingen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, along the Mexican border. Inez was the eldest of six children and was the first Mexican-American female to graduate from high school in her home town. In 1949, she married Antonio Loredo. They relocated to Chicago in 1958 to a small apartment on West Harrison Street seeking better job opportunities. One year later, they were forced to move once again to pave the way for the construction of the University of Illinois Circle Campus. She, her husband and two children relocated to nearby Pilsen.
Pilsen was an entry port to many immigrants - Germans, Lithuanians and other Eastern Europeans. Now, it was Mexicans who were the newest immigrants. The transition from one immigrant group to another was not easy. Not only were the newcomers immigrants, they were Mexican, many of them undocumented, they spoke another language, they celebrated a different culture and for the next ten years, it would be a struggle as the community shifted into a predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Inez's children were enrolled in Jungman Elementary and in 1960 she became one of the first bilingual Mexican-American to join the PTA in Pilsen. Before long she was the translator for new families enrolli...
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