Uriel Sanchez

When I was as young as five, I could remember visiting my pediatrician at Norwegian-American Hospitals newest wing. I was always interested in going to see my doctor from the phillipines & her proud manner of speaking about being an immigrant. I was interested in the wide open windows, sandy & red metallic colors, and the mystery that laid behind every door.

My parents spoke, and still do, highly of doctors. Their stories of doctors who helped their first child in Mexico, deliver their second & third. They were imprints of people from another time & another land.

Having had moved to the US at the age of 2 from Puebla in 1993, I never had the memory to remember the doctors or hospitals. Despite growing up around Cook County, Humboldt Park’s public clinics & hospitals, NBC’s ER, & other students in my high school that had surgeons for parents, I’ve always looked back to my ancestral past of healers, the people who cared for me. I’ve looked back to continue that as an undocumented immigrant in another time & land.

The Butterfly postcard campaign was developed by the UIC Latino Cultural Center in collaboration with student organizations Fearless Undocumented Alliance and Heritage Garden Student Group that highlights the parallels between the migration of people and Monarch butterflies across national borders.