Rapid economic globalization and recent political violence have spawned mass migrations of humanity across international borders throughout the Americas. The migrations have sparked fierce debates in many of the "receiving" countries, where the combination of exploding demands for cheap foreign labor and state obligations to protect incoming refugees have often provoked strong domestic opposition to the presence of foreign-born individuals—especially those without official documentation. While many of these debates have focused on the enactment of policies restricting the immigration of foreign-born adults, xenophobic sentiments have opened new political spaces to begin imposing limitations on the birth registration of the native-born children of immigrants.

After the indigenous uprising in Peru’s Amazon region in June, it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.

On Sunday, September 27, a violent conflict broke out in El Estor, a municipality near Guatemala's Pacific coast, between members of a Q'eqchi' community called Las Nubes and private security guards of the Guatemala Nickel Company (CGN), a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company, Hudbay Resources. Community members report that CGN's security forces kidnapped and killed Adolfo Ich Xamán, a local teacher and community leader, and gravely injured eight others.

The decision by a Miami court on October 13 to reduce Antonio Guerrero's life sentence to 22 years imprisonment is the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battle to free a group of men known as the Cuban Five. The case is inextricably linked to the ongoing standoff between Havana and Washington. In the early 1990s, the Cuban government sent a group of men to the United States to infiltrate violent anti-Castro organizations, which had been operating from Miami with apparent impunity since the 1960s. After these anti-Castro organizations orchestrated the bombings of Cuban hotels and the shooting down of a Cuban passenger aircraft near Barbados in 1976, the Cuban government decided to take covert actions, believing that Washington was not interested in preventing more attacks.