Tim Padgett
Americas EditorTim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida.
He is also host of WLRN's weekly news show, The South Florida Roundup.
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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COMMENTARY With Trump's presidency all but in ashes after this week's apocalyptic midterm elections, Pope Leo XIV's Latin America tour also augurs the demise of Trump's hemispheric Donroe Doctrine. -
Three-term GOP Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar led her Democratic challenger, ex-TV news anchor Eliott Rodriguez, by less than half a percentage point — meaning a likely recount in a race that Salazar called a "warning" to her party. -
Recent polling from sources such as FIU show Florida Latinos have defected significantly from President Trump since 2024 — two-thirds say the country is going in the wrong direction — and that was especially evident among younger voters in Palmetto Bay. -
Florida International University's new poll of South Florida Cubans indicates that despite their anger at seeing so many in their community caught up in President Trump's immigration dragnet, they still plan to vote Republican in next week's midterm elections. -
COMMENTARY Now that defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro is in Florida, fleeing investigations, his legions of fans here should recall how his father damaged their image in 2023. -
In next week’s midterm elections, President Trump and the Republicans stand to lose the sizable gains they made with Latino voters in 2024 — and a new FIU poll indicates just how badly, both nationwide and in Florida. -
Right wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro was the favorite in Sunday's Brazilian presidential runoff election — but leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won decisively, stunning South Florida's large and largely "Bolsonarista" Brazilian diaspora. -
After almost a year in exile — and having repeated attempts to return reportedly blocked by President Trump — popular democratic opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado is now back in Venezuela, raising hopes for new elections there. -
COMMENTARY The Cuban community is squandering the purposeful goodwill it should enjoy in Miami by indulging yet again in political ill will — as elections devolve into stunts and attacks related to Cuba. -
Sunday's ambush and apparent abduction of members of a new international police support force underscore the relentless gang violence that has forced yet another postponement of Haiti's desperately needed elections — and the potentially deadly risks Haitian deportees face. -
COMMENTARY The upcoming Día de la Raza observance begs the question: do Latinos aspire to be part of the vital diversity that defines America, or of the vulgar exclusivity that's undermining it? -
U.S. authorities announced Wednesday they had intercepted more than 600,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel headed for a state importer in Cuba in violation of a de facto Trump administration blockade on the island.
