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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Miami-based YouTube influencer Oscar Alejandro Perez made a joke that got him arrested in Venezuela — a reminder, say expats, of the "roulette" risks of going there.
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With Haiti's main airport still closed, Haitians in South Florida can only watch as gangs that control Port-au-Prince violently tear through their families' neighborhoods.
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COMMENTARY Deeper Cuban suffering has sparked new protests — but don't expect the regime or exiles to soften their stances in ways that might actually ease that misery.
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Haiti's violent but more unified gangs uprising has forced an unpopular prime minister's resignation — but could it also block any other kind of government except theirs?
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COMMENTARY Assembling a new governing council in Haiti will be grueling — but it's a chance to promote better leadership than the toxic ruling class Ariel Henry represents.
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COMMENTARY Florida is the chief source of high-power weapons smuggled to gangs in Haiti — so maybe the Gunshine State should deploy its troops there to rein in the violence.
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With violent gangs blocking the prime minister's return, Haiti is lost in a power vacuum that a drug convict might fill — and Haitian expats say U.S. policy is partly guilty.
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COMMENTARY Even if Venezuela looks lost to ruinous dictatorship now, the resilience of an iconic voice like Yordano is a reminder to keep hoping the country still has a future.
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Paula Delgado-Kling's poignant new book chronicling the civil war nightmare of a teen guerrilla makes the case for reforming Colombia's countryside even more urgent.
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Dissident Venezuelan army officer Ronald Ojeda had political asylum in Chile. Officials there don't discount Venezuelan regime involvement in his abduction this week.
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COMMENTARY South Florida Latinos embrace Donald Trump — even as he undermines the cause of democracy in their homelands by embracing Vladimir Putin.
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A high-profile spate of Venezuelan migrant crime, from New York to Chile, has the exile community wrestling with its own 'Mariel boatlift' divide. But the 'crisis' looks overblown.