When Luis Andrés Monterroso López, 29, set foot on Guatemalan soil on December 19, 2025 — his first time back in three years — he was furious. Dressed in a gray jumpsuit and dark‑blue slippers, the standard uniform for migrants held in U.S. detention, he spoke to his mother on the phone while sitting outside the Guatemalan Air Force base where deportation flights land. “They don’t treat animals like this. I came back with my hands and feet shackled,” he told her, outraged.

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Tamales, tacos, burritos, pupusas… traditional Latin American food is now deeply woven into the culinary landscape of the United States. A fundamental part of each country’s culture and heritage, the recipes that Latinos pass down from generation to generation have not only helped them preserve their customs at home — they have also long served as a way for many migrants to make a living upon arriving in the United States. Necessity sharpens ingenuity, and when there is no money or resources to open formal businesses such as restaurants, sales move to the street, to home delivery, online, or to local markets.

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On March 1 the Kimolos, an oil tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag and operated by a Greek shipping company, disappeared from radars while sailing south-southwest about 60 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast. Two days earlier, it had docked at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey. There, it had loaded approximately one million barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil at the BTC pipeline terminal, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea. For nearly four days, the tanker — which had declared that it was heading to Port Said, Egypt — stopped transmitting its position to the Automatic Identification System (AIS), as it is required to do by maritime safety regulations. After those four days, according to the Global Fishing Watch tracking platform, it reappeared about 40 miles south of the spot where it had disappeared, only this time it was sailing north, back towards the port of Ceyhan. What happened during those days it had become a phantom ship?

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Signs that Brazil is a brutally unequal country are an everyday occurrence. This very week, the fact was unequivocally on display. While the percentage of indebted Brazilian families reached a new record at 80%, making its way into the electoral debate, the reaction of a judge to the fear of losing the extravagant privileges of the bureaucratic elite has left the public stunned. Not to mention, generated scandal. “Soon we won’t even be able to pay the bills,” complained the magistrate. Eva do Amaral Coelho, who is white, went even further: “Soon, judges will be like those civil servants working under slave-like conditions.” Last month, Coelho earned about $18,000 in salary and bonuses. Her fellow citizens know it thanks to Brazil’s transparency laws.

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He was an engineer before he was a writer (although he’s more of a writer than an engineer). Mexican novelist David Toscana spent 10 years at companies like General Motors, Mattel (“Making Barbie dolls,” he says) and Coca-Cola. He worked as an engineer in the maquiladoras, those Mexican assembly plants along the U.S. border, where laborers put together parts that are received from around the world. This industry is part of the labyrinth that is globalized production.

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