In the early morning of November 15, Occupy Wall Street was raided by the New York City Police Department and occupiers were evicted from Zuccotti Park. Nevertheless, says OWS en Español member Eudes Payano in this interview with NACLA, "the movement will continue and it will be even stronger."

On Sunday, voters in Nicaragua and Guatemala chose their country’s next presidents. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega sailed to victory and a third term. In Guatemala, retired general Otto Perez Molina was elected despite concerns over his involvement in human rights violations during the former military regime.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly again voted overwhelming to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba. As international relations scholar Arturo López-Levy points out in the latest NACLA Report, the embargo itself violates basic principles of the human rights model established by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In April, the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba approved the most profound reforms that the island had seen since the 1960s. They are meant to revive the flagging economy. But are they sufficient? The jury is still out, and the answer will depend on the implementation of the reforms themselves. This article was originally published in the July/August 2011 issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.