Spanish major Heman Urban focused on creating a bright yellow Lamborghini at an art-making and wellness workshop.

It had been renamed Carros Caros (Expensive Cars). The description to the side had a quote from Urban: “When I was in México, I assumed everyone drove one of these here. Guess not.”

Urban is part of El Camino College’s UndocuWarriors Club which hosted six workshops to support students and employees who are undocumented, formerly undocumented or who come from families with mixed immigration status.

Urban is one of many students who developed art for an exhibition in Schauerman Library’s Collaboration Room. The exhibition was part of Undocumented Student Action Week in Oct.

El Camino’s Undocumented/immigrant Student Success Coordinator Aldo Vazquez said the workshops developed from discussions about the difficulties people have sharing their stories.

“When we ask people to talk about their migration, some people don’t want to document their trauma in words,” Vazquez said. “But expressing it artistically is a way they can share it with other people.”

Vazquez said art gives people the opportunity to show who they are.

“Art helps us to express our biggest dreams and fears,” Vazquez said. “To be hurt and angry and resentful, but also hopeful and joyful, and to live free and without shame.”

Vazquez created a painting of California milkweed with a poem documenting migrants being compared to parasites. When he was an Orange County Community College student, several professors referred to Vazquez as a “leech” when they found out he was undocumented.

“It feels cruel to see a caterpillar in the milkweed from which she feeds,” Vazquez wrote, describing his painting titled “In the Milkweeds”. “And call that natural hunger for growth, theft.”

The exhibition opening also featured poet Yosimar Reyes who was born in Guerrero, Mexico and raised in San Jose, California. He came to the U.S. when he was three and was fluent in English when he started school.

“Everyone wanted me to be tragic as if my suffering should justify me being here,” Reyes said. “But the truth is, I don’t remember crossing the border.”

In his poetry, Reyes wanted to “consider how abundant we are and the level of genius it takes to survive under this predicament.”

Most of all, he wanted to express the joy in migrant communities.

“We exist beyond deportation narratives,” Reyes said.

Reyes told the audience that he was “a bitter little immigrant” as a teen when he suddenly realized that he couldn’t get a driver’s license or work at Raging Waters.

“I also realized I was gay. I was like ‘Oh my God, what else?’ Reyes said. But eventually, I found that my cultural embarrassments were my biggest blessings.”

Reyes said she loves undocumented people because of the adversity they endure.

“I love us because we have constantly had to prove our humanity,” Reyes said. “Every day, we wake up to a country that hates us but we go to work and bless the day.”

Urban, who also came to the United States at 3 years old, hopes that the exhibition spreads the word to the El Camino College community that the UndocuWarriors Club exists.

“The club provides a safe space and people who understand you,” Urban said. “That’s especially important in college when you’re trying to figure out who you are.”