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 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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The guest list for President Trump's Shield of the Americas summit at his resort hotel in Doral includes exclusively leaders aligned with his western hemisphere policies, such as declaring drug cartels "narco-terrorists." -
COMMENTARY Cuban regime change may take more time and effort than expected — meaning Cuban exile leaders like Congressman Carlos Gimenez shouldn't alienate potential partners like Jamaica. -
Cuban officials accuse former political prisoner and now Miami resident Maritza Lugo Fernandez of organizing the alleged Cuban expat boat raid – though she apparently did not take part in it. -
Alleged expat 'terrorist' said he was 'ready to die' to free Cuba — and called exile leaders cowardsCuba says two of the ten Cuban expats captured after a shootout with its coast guard were already on the regime's terrorist list — and in a recent video, one of them urged "cowardly" exiles to die to free the communist island. Meanwhile, it emerged that the boat used by the expats may have been stolen from a home in the Florida Keys. -
COMMENTARY The U.S. is great at designating criminal groups as terrorists — but it's a hypocritical failure at preventing the trafficking of guns that aids those terrorists, including Mexico's narco-cartels. -
Cuban entrepreneurs like Aldo Alvarez hope Secretary of State Marco Rubio's pitch for economic as well as political rights will move Havana's communists — and Miami's exiles — to take the private sector more seriously amid the island's humanitarian emergency. -
COMMENTARY President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio seem to have tuned out Venezuelan and Cuban exile leaders — and their own rhetoric about blocking China's influence in the Americas. -
Miami Republican Congressmen Carlos Gimenez and other Cuban exile leaders are urging the Trump administration to cancel all export licenses that send luxury goods to communist Cuba — even though data indicate it's hardly a problem. -
COMMENTARY As the U.S. cuts off oil to Cuba, Havana's communist regime and Miami's exile leadership remain locked in a zero-sum mindset that risks greater humanitarian catastrophe on the island. -
Recently retired CBS4 news anchorman Eliott Rodriguez told WLRN "I am seriously considering" a Democratic challenge for GOP Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar's seat this year — and immigration is a key reason. -
Fellow Puerto Ricans say reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show was a lush tribute to their island — and to the Latino community in general, at a moment when it feels like a special target of U.S. discrimination. -
COMMENTARY As the U.S. cuts off global oil to Cuba, the island's communist regime could get President Trump to back off by offering something he's showing special interest in: dictatorship consulting.
