Tim Padgett
Americas EditorTim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida.
Padgett has reported on Latin America for more than 30 years — including for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief and for Time as its Latin America and Miami bureau chief — from the end of Central America's civil wars to the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations. He has interviewed more than 20 heads of state.
In 2005, Padgett received Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize for his body of work in Latin America. In 2016 he won a national Edward R. Murrow award for the radio series "The Migration Maze," about the brutal causes of — and potential solutions to — Central American migration.
Padgett is an Indiana native and a graduate of Wabash College. He received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School and studied in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. He has been an adult literacy volunteer and is a member of the Catholic poverty aid organization St. Vincent de Paul.
Contact Tim at tpadgett@wlrnnews.org
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COMMENTARY If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis really wants to stop the migrant invasion he's girding for, he can steer the millions he's wasting on state patrol to Haiti development. -
The State Department recognized Miami Cuban exile Maria Werlau, who confronts Cuba's doctor and labor export program, among those combating human trafficking. -
A pioneering U.S. civil trial judgment against banana giant Chiquita Brands for its actions in Colombia — which helped aid a terrorist group — featured a host of South Florida players. A second trial in West Palm Beach is set to begin next month, and it may not be the last one. -
COMMENTARY Former Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló and "official" Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez are self-serving reminders of what drives their island's exoduses here. -
COMMENTARY Venezuelan Dictator-President Nicolás Maduro will inevitably lose a fair election — so he's goading his challenger to accept inevitable fraud. -
In a WLRN interview, Transitional Presidential Council member Leslie Voltaire says he's confident Haiti will escape gang rule — and sees a big role for the diaspora. -
A decade after Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez led a gutsy drive to establish an independent news outlet on the communist island, 14ymedio is eyeing the next 10 years. -
COMMENTARY Florida Sen. Marco Rubio disgracefully insults real dictatorship victims by equating Donald Trump's conviction with the real injustices of regimes like Cuba's. -
Trump's OAS ambassador, Miami's Carlos Trujillo, insists Florida Latinos see in Trump's conviction the rigged justice systems of some totalitarian Latin American countries. -
Haiti's women's soccer standout Melchie Dumornay was just named the young player of the year in Europe's Champions League. It's a huge deal in Little Haiti, too. -
COMMENTARY: Mexico holds a presidential election on June 2, but its "de facto rulers" are drug cartels — a big reason Floridians should legalize marijuana on November 5. -
COMMENTARY The political reaction to an official Cuban tour of Miami International Airport this week was outrageous — but so was the U.S. government's cluelessness.
