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 President-elect Trump wants to thwart China's canal influence in Panama, he needs to offer the isthmus partnership instead of petulance — and a more serious ambassador pick. -
Former President Jimmy Carter's death on Sunday evokes memories of the Mariel boatlift of 1980, which allowed 125,000 Cubans to come to South Florida. -
The heavenly, rum-soaked fruit confection called black cake is arguably the most important food fixture of any Caribbean Christmas celebration. -
COMMENTARY King Herod — a monstrous ruler who in the Christmas story forced Jesus' family to flee their country — has plenty of modern heirs driving the western hemisphere's migrant crisis today. -
After 57 years, a screen adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's Latin American epic Cien Años de Soledad — One Hundred Years of Solitude — finally debuted on Netflix this week. But will the 16-part series bring a new generation to the historic magical realist novel? -
COMMENTARY Trump's lying and/or ignorant quest to kill birthright citizenship trashes not only the New World ideal — but also his movement's supposed exaltation of the little guy standing up to elites. -
Many Haitians have little hope that a multinational security mission there can bring anyone to justice for the gang massacre that human rights groups say killed almost 200 people in a Port-au-Prince slum last weekend — the second such gang atrocity in two months. -
COMMENTARY President Biden's dishonest and hypocritical pardon of his convicted son will embolden anti-constitutionalists not only in the U.S. but in judicially-challenged Latin America too. -
Though they keep losing Latino voters like Cubans and Venezuelans, Democrats thought Puerto Ricans were the one bloc that would stick with them. But Trump performed unexpectedly well with them last month, even in South Florida. -
Human Rights Watch reports that sexual violence has become yet another escalating and "horrific" tool of the gangs that keep spreading their power in Haiti. Some 4,000 women and girls have reported being raped by gang members just this year, according to the group. -
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity — leaving Venezuelans to ask when the same will happen to their brutal leader, Nicolás Maduro. -
COMMENTARY If a Secretary of State Marco Rubio hopes to rally Latin America against left-wing despots like Nicolás Maduro by exalting right-wing despots like Nayib Bukele, it could backfire.
