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 35 years — including for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief and for Time as its Latin America and Miami bureau chief — and he has interviewed more than 20 heads of state, from Mexico to Brazil.
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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Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara spent five years behind bars in Cuba for taking part in — and using his art to help motivate — mass anti-regime protests there in July of 2021. He was released last month and sent to exile in Miami. But several conservative Cuban social media influencers now publicly question whether Otero genuinely suffered as a political prisoner. -
COMMENTARY By imitating Donald Trump's obsession with pushing baseless claims of electoral fraud, leftist Colombian leader Gustavo Petro has put the finishing touch on his dysfunctional presidency. -
Unlike Hispanics elsewhere, Florida's are sticking with President Trump, largely because he and his party bond with right-wing Latin American leaders like Colombia's Abelardo de la Espriella, who takes office on Friday — but brings his own controversial baggage. -
Under the Trump administration's tacit oversight, Venezuela's authoritarian regime and democratic opposition start negotiations on Saturday in Caracas to hammer out agreements leading to new elections. But could the timeline last longer than Trump's presidency? -
COMMENTARY In this season of Odyssey-mania, it's hard to ignore the frustrated Homeric wanderings of Venezuelan democracy leader María Corina Machado — and the pseudo-god who's decreeing them. -
Rights organizations and civic leaders inside Haiti, warn the Trump administration's plans for Haitian TPS deportations risk violating an international law principle that prohibits forcing refugees back to a place where they're likely to be harmed if not killed. -
COMMENTARY Did a Mexican tourist run to his death in Florida this month because he feared U.S. immigration enforcement has become — by design — as predatory as law enforcement back in Mexico? -
The U.S. labels Cuba a major subversive threat. Is it rationale for invasion or rhetoric for exiles?A State Department report claims Cuba remains the prime "launch pad" of leftist, anti-American subversion and "upheavals" inside the U.S. and from abroad. But even Miami's Cuban exiles seem resigned that the charges don't likely mean imminent U.S. military action. -
COMMENTARY Argentina used Messi marketing to make its soccer association perhaps the world's richest today — but in the process it's become an FBI-targeted poster child for what's wrong with the sport. -
COMMENTARY Because President Trump insists he "runs" Venezuela today, he shares in its regime's abysmal response to last month's earthquakes — and bears the onus for the country's reconstruction. -
In 2024, Venezuelans marshaled online forces to prove their dictatorship had lost — and robbed — a presidential election. In 2026 they're summoning that experience, and those cyber-skills, to respond to an earthquake catastrophe. -
When an expat pilot landed in Venezuela with desperately needed earthquake aid from Doral, he learned he'd lost numerous close family and friends in the disaster — but says it's made him even more determined now to deliver help.
