(catchy instrumental music) (catchy instrumental music continues) (narrator speaking in foreign language) - My name is Dulcinea Herrera, and I'm from Taos, New Mexico.

I've lived in Kansas City for about six years now.

My mom's side of the family is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and my dad's side is Mexican and Mescalero Apache.

Even though our cultures are so different, together, it's really cool and I feel like I learned so much from each one.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (even music) - So Cafe Corazon is a family business me and my parents started about four years ago.

We started it because we realized that most coffee comes from Latin America, but no one ever pays homage to that.

No one ever really talks about the cultures or the people from Latin America.

So we wanted to give and be a voice and be a representation here in this city for Latin American coffee.

We're also Beyond Fair Trade, meaning that we know that everything is fairly treated.

Everyone's fairly treated, they're getting compensated well, and that's a really important part of our history here at Cafe Corazon.

- We can share them out there.

- I like your headband.

We should share them out here.

- Thank you, yeah.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) - Dulci's art is so cool because she's been doing it since she was very small.

So it's really like changed over the years.

- When I paint, I feel very therapeutic.

I just get lost, like I usually don't even look at the time.

I don't look at the clock because it just goes, goes, goes.

Sometimes, it's 5:00 PM and I look and it's 1:00 AM, and I love that.

I think it's helped me become more into myself.

(melancholic music) - I feel like Dulci's done kind of everything.

She's tried all kinds of processes and different mediums, and it's kind of led her to this new sort of thing she's doing now, which is portraits that kind of empower people of color.

And I think that's really important.

So I approve that her work has taken on this sort of political significance in these times.

(melancholic music continues) (narrator speaking in foreign language) - I grew up in nature and my dad is part native, so I feel very connected to this side of me and I feel like I feel energies a lot.

Sometimes, it's overwhelming like when I go out, I don't really like it because I feel like I'm feeling everything and I don't want to.

So sometimes, I think that's why painting or doing art is really good for me because it's almost like therapy and I get to be with myself and I just get to feel really relaxed.

This is something very important to me.

But I do feel like when we have ancestors who focus more on love and like giving back to the earth, being around the earth and paying respect to the earth, we might be more like that.

Whereas if our ancestors were maybe more about money or power, it's harder to feel things.

I feel like you feel empathy more through generations of love and nature.

Not to say no one can.

I think that all of us actually have that ability to be able to do it, it's just we have to find that way.

(melancholic music continues) One of my philosophies to life is be in nature.

It will heal you.

This is actually something I use before I paint every time.

So I always sage and I always palo santo.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) - So everyone has their way, but what I like to say is my ancestors and angels that only want love and happiness for me, bless me, my fiance in this house.

Bless our family, give us good energy.

Any negative energy around us, inside of us in this house, I ask that you remove it and give us protection of all of our dreams and everything we want and our love flourish in our life.

Amen.

Here you go, cameraman.

(laughs) People are gonna think I'm loca, but I don't care.

(laughs) Ah, feel better?

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (pensive instrumental music) (pensive instrumental music continues) (interviewee speaking in foreign language) (pensive instrumental music continues) (crickets chirping) (spray paint can rattling and hissing) (narrator speaking in foreign language) - My name is Isaac Tapia, and I am originally from Mexico City.

I was around eight years old when I came to the United States.

I remember it was in April that we came and I turned nine in June.

(light music) (spray paint can hissing) I have been living in Kansas City for about 22 years now.

- My name is Rodrigo Alvarez, and I was born in Rivera, Uruguay.

I've been in Kansas City for 20 years.

- Kansas City represents home, or at least that's what I want to call it or at least that's what I feel it is to me.

(light music continues) I don't see myself doing anything else but painting.

- I paint to represent my family, my culture, Latino family, basically to be represented in those places or spaces that we are not really welcome to paint to create that space, a welcoming space where everyone feels represented.

And within that representation, I'd like to invite people that look like me and just open conversation.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) - It's been such an amazing experience to work with somebody that's also very hardworking.

- We share a lot of time together.

We share a lot of struggles together.

- Definitely, it's been awesome to see growth in him and me and us.

And it's just a blessing to be part of what we've created.

(slow music) - For a long time, I had a hard time putting myself as a Mexican or as an American.

Now it's easier for me to say I'm an immigrant in the United States, that for sure I know and I'm reminded a lot.

(slow music continues) - Although people have been inviting to me, I've been made to feel like I don't belong here often, just basically by the way I look, the way I speak.

And people have reinforced that feeling within me by politics in the United States.

(slow music continues) (narrator speaking in foreign language) - If you are undocumented, you live in a constant state of fear.

Fear of being stopped by the police, fear of not being able to work and provide, fear of everything, you just constantly are in fear.

And DACA basically gave me a safety net.

And although it doesn't expand to my parents, I feel like by extension, I can help 'em.

DACA was a door to have a peace of mind.

I've been given an opportunity to something with my life.

Although it was taken away at an earlier age for not having it, now having it is kind of a reason to live, to like keep going, to create openly, to breathe.

(slow music continues) (family members cheer) - When DACA was passed and I was still scared to apply for DACA.

I didn't apply until 2015, I think or 2016, simply because I was scared, I didn't want to.

I was, I guess you could say comfortable with what I was doing, even though it wasn't what I wanted to do.

I was helping my parents with a janitorial company and I was just stuck there for a while.

And after that, I decided, "You know what?

Let's try this DACA thing."

I applied for it and that opened up so many doors for me.

It opened up opportunities, it opened up the art world again.

So I had stopped painting for a while, and it just brought me back to what I really wanted to do for me, for my life basically.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (soothing music) (soothing music continues) - [Presenter] They overlooked that cleansing fountain of nature and brotherhood, which is Joaquin.

The art of our great (speaks in foreign language) Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco is but another act of revolution for the salvation of mankind.

(soothing music continues) - [Reporter 1] Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA.

Back in 2021, US District Judge Andrew Haden ruled that Obama-era program was illegal.

- [Reporter 2] And according to the Department of Homeland Security, DACA recipients and their households pay 5.6 billion in federal taxes annually.

The program has faced constant challenges.

In 2017, the program was rescinded by the Trump administration, but after legal challenges of five to four, Supreme Court ruled in favor of dreamers in June of 2020.

But in July of last year, a federal judge in Texas ruled that DACA was illegal and block new applicant approvals while maintaining protections for those currently in the program.

A growing number of DACA recipients say that due to years of uncertainty, they're looking to leave the country on their own terms.

- [Obama] I mean these are kids who were brought here by their parents.

They did nothing wrong.

They've gone to school.

They have pledged allegiance to the flag.

Some of them have joined the military.

They've enrolled in school.

By definition, if they're part of this program, they are solid, wonderful young people of good character.

And it is my strong belief that the majority of the American people would not want to see suddenly those kids have to start hiding again.

(gradual music) - My name is Cesar Velez.

I am from Guerrero, Mexico, currently residing in Kansas City and I'm a visual artist and painter.

I grew up in southwest Kansas as well as parts of Texas.

Been in the United States now more than, or almost 27 years.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (melancholic music) - I moved here so early that it's hard to remember a lot, but the moments that I do have, they're very, very vivid and ingrained in my brain.

Actually, my earliest memory in general is being on the beach in Acapulco with my family, with my mom, and my brothers.

And there's bittersweetness to it, knowing where I come from, but knowing that it's difficult to return and knowing that the decisions my family made to get here were all sacrifices for a better life.

But in doing so, I also feel like a portion of me was left in Mexico.

(melancholic music continues) (narrator speaking in foreign language) - Growing up, I always thought that I was American, but it really wasn't until I got a little bit older and learned about my undocumented status and kind of those limitations when I finally understood what it meant to be an immigrant.

(melancholic music continues) The work I've been making over the past two years or so has been about my story and about what it was like to grow up undocumented but not realize it.

So it's titled "The Hidden Burden", and it's about childhood, it's about childhood obliviousness.

As you can see, my art is very personal.

It is very much a reflection of myself and the things that I'm going through.

(melancholic music continues) You're taught to never speak about it if you're undocumented, like it's ingrained in you.

You don't openly talk about this stuff.

Like I never told anybody I was undocumented until I was 24 years old, like and that was my best friend.

Once you realize you're undocumented and once you realize what it actually means, then every single decision you make is impacted by that reality.

(melancholic music continues) - [Trump] Across our borders, they come by the millions and millions and millions.

They come from mental institutions.

They come from jails, prisoners, some of the toughest, meanest people you'll ever see.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (slow music) - The burden doesn't ever get easier, but you learn to live with it and you learn how to apply it in ways that are beneficial for you.

(slow music continues) Growing up in America, you're often taught that immigrants are the other and immigrants are the bad person.

Immigrants are illegal, they're aliens, they're stealing our jobs.

They use all this negative language to describe just people.

So what I wanna do is just show that I'm just a person, like I'm not this object to be used for hatred or for rhetoric and I'm not trying to steal any jobs.

I'm just trying to live, like that's why my family came over here.

No one ever wants to leave their home country.

You only come here because you're forced to or you have to, and that's what my mom did.

(narrator speaking in foreign language) (slow music continues) - My dream is to create as long as I can, as freely as I can with no restrictions, and to see my family happy.

(heart thumping) (narrator speaking in foreign language) (moderate instrumental music) (moderate instrumental music continues) (moderate instrumental music continues) (moderate instrumental music continues)