Carlos Javier Ortiz - whose images (figs. 1-6) won the 2021 Current Anthropology Visual Anthropology Prize and appear on this year's journal covers - grew up moving back and forth between Puerto Rico and the US mainland. Echoes of his biography can be seen in the stories he tells through his images: tales of a people's plight for self-determination and democratic government but also sagas of migrants and displaced peoples in search of stability and a place to call home. His photographic works, like his own biography, flow from the interdependence of residents of "America" - a colonial name yet a name still used today to refer to the whole of the continent, South, Central, and North America. In the tradition of much Latin American photography, his works form part of an enduring effort to bear witness to that America - namely, an America characterized by shared histories of colonial rule, of imperial intervention, and of the economic domination of Indigenous peoples.