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.
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 current 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. Hehas been an adult literacy volunteer and is a member of the Catholic poverty aid organization St. Vincent de Paul.
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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.
