Tim Padgett
Tim Padgett is the Americas editor for Miami NPR affiliate WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. He has reported on Latin America for almost 30 years - for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief in Mexico and Miami (where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast) from 1996 to 2013.
Padgett has interviewed more than 20 heads of state, from Brazil to Mexico, and he was one of the few U.S. correspondents to sit down with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He has covered every major Latin American and Caribbean story from the end of the Central American civil wars of the 1980s to NAFTA and the Colombian guerrilla conflict of the 1990s; to the Brazilian boom, the Venezuelan revolution and Mexican drug war carnage of the 2000s; to the current normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations.
In 2005, Padgett received Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the oldest international award in journalism, for his body of work from the region. 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. His 1993 Newsweek cover, “Cocaine Comes Home,” won the Inter-American Press Association’s drug coverage award.
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 before studying in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. He started his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he led the paper's coverage of the 1986 immigration reform.Padgett has also written for publications such as The New Republic and America andhas been a frequent analyst on CNN, Fox and NPR, as well as Spanish-language networks such as Univision.
Padgett has been an adult literacy volunteer and is a member of the Catholic anti-poverty organization St. Vincent de Paul. He currently lives in Miami with his wife and two children.
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Authorities say Nikolas Cruz, 19, is a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and he had been expelled for disciplinary reasons. He was arrested on Wednesday without incident.
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The wave of migrants trying to reach the U.S. hasn't stopped, but in a major change, Mexico is rounding them up and sending them home before they reach the U.S. border. -
Cuba needs the Internet to rebuild its ragged economy. That's why fledgling private businesspeople are traveling to Miami to learn how to do business online. -
Latin economies thrived when prices for raw commodities soared. But with those prices down sharply, the region is hurting owing to a lack of high-tech and other cutting-edge industries. -
Panama City's skyline is full of gleaming office towers, and the economy is the fastest-growing in Latin America thanks to the canal. But the country still suffers from glaring social inequalities. -
A century after the canal opened, it's being expanded to accommodate some of the world's biggest cargo ships. But the project has been delayed by a $1.6 billion financial dispute. -
The official cheap liquor of spring breakers is becoming something much more sophisticated. And South Florida has become ground zero for the rum revolution. -
President Nicolas Maduro was elected less than a year ago, but he's already facing protests from restive students and others angry over high inflation and shortages of many goods. -
In the past 20 years, almost 50,000 enslaved Brazilian workers have been freed from some 2,000 work sites. But an estimated 200,000 remain trapped in slavery, owing to deep-seated impunity: Slaveholders can pay hefty fines and civil damages, but criminal convictions and jail time are rare.
