Covering the Americas
I’ve been a journalist since 1972, when I started working for daily newspapers in New Mexico. Since then, I’ve been based in Mexico City, Miami and now Washington. For some of that time, I was on staff at Newsweek and Time magazines, as well as other publications. I set up this site to make some of my work from the past 25 years or so easily available.
Most of the stories are set in Latin America and the Caribbean. For
the most part, they tell of powerless people trying to navigate through
events they don’t control. People in power may not control events
either. But I don’t seem to have spent most of my time with them.
Most articles are available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document
Format (PDF), though their larger file size means that they will take
substantially longer to download. A link to the PDF file is visible in
the sidebar and shows an special graphic icon 
.
You can get the free viewer at Adobe's website.
Contact
I am based in Washington, D.C. Please send an e-mail message to PeterAKatel (at) yahoo.com
News Articles
Time
- A Bus Ride Across Mexico's Other Border: Central Americans trying to get to the U.S. are sent back home instead (August 13, 2001)
- Slamming the Door: Stiffer border security has put the livelihoods of many Mexicans at risk (January 14, 2002) - Also see here at CNN.
- Meltdown: As enraged Argentines violently protest economic collapse, a new President, Eduardo Duhalde, takes power. Can he solve the crisis? (March 11, 2002)
- Under the Gun: Execution-style killings have Colombia's trade-union activists running scared (August 13, 2001). Also see the Internetational Labor Rights Fund
Newsweek
- Spoils of Law: They struck gold -- then fought. Call them the Lawyers of the Sierra Madre (December 20, 1997)
- A Coward Speaks Out: Cuba / The Island's hot read is a pitiless memoir (September 1, 1997)
- To Have and Have Not: Cuba / Foreign investors — and ordinary Cubans — can just keep dreaming of making easy money (November 11, 1995)
- The Best of Times, or Not: Haiti / As the U.S. intervention nears its end, the capital tells a tale of two cities -- ours and theirs (March 20, 1995)
- The Trouble with Informants (January 30, 1995)
- A Black and 'Blan' Mission: Haiti / African American GIs as liberators (November 21, 1994)
- Choosing to Die: Cuba / Did some youths get AIDS-on purpose? (April 16, 1994)
- The 'Worms' Become Butterflies: Cuba / Now Castro is reaching out to the exiles he used to revile (April 25, 1994)
- The Bust in Boot Camp: Crime / A hot trend is less promising than it sounds (February 21, 1994)
- Looking Out for Their Own Skin: Haiti / Don't cry for the 'repugnant' rich (August 30, 1993)
- A Rash of Media Murders: Foreign journalists are dying on the job (July 5, 1993)
- Challenging the Rule of Fear: Human-rights teams guard Haiti's uneasy truce (April 12, 1993)
- Death in the Shooting Galleries: Talk about a deeply rooted drug culture. In Puerto Rico, the shooting galleries post house rules (March 29, 1993)
- The Latin Techno-Yuppies: Young and American-educated, they are shaking up state-run economies across South America (November 11, 1990)
- A Surprise on Mexican TV: The opposition on the air (June 20, 1988)
Christian Science Monitor
- The Many Conspiracies of Crack Cocaine: Supply-siders lacked the whole story (November 18, 1996)
Loft
- South of South of the Border: The deadly trek to El Norte starts far below Mexico (November 2003)
Wired
Poder
The magazine is based in Miami, FL. All articles are in Spanish.
- El siete vidas (November 2003)
- Corte de cuentas (September, 2003)
- Lo más duro está por venir (September 2002)
- Durmiendo con el enemigo No. 34 - July 2001 (Venezuela website).
- Mr Uribe Goes to Washington (July 2002)
Miami Herald
- COLOMBIA: Rebranding the road to peace?, August 19, 2004
Corrections Magazine
- The Anatomy of a Riot, April 1980 The document is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (15.6 Mb).
Studies
Children Abandoned: Guatemala's Young People and Their Search for a Future. International Social Service - United States of America Branch, 2003. The document is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and available in English (1.42 MB) and Spanish (1.07 MB).
On the Web
- The Mystery in Box D366 Washington Post October 13, 2002, Page W16
- Back to Work: Once sleepy local labor councils are now rousing a new union cities movement, Utne Reader January/February 2001 Issue. Requires subscription to the online service.
- CNN Transcript The New Frontier: American-Mexican Relations, aired June 3, 2001
- Time Q&A Argentina's Crisis Explained, Dec. 20, 2001
- CubaNet Melenas y sueños en La Habana. Published January 16, 2001 in El Nuevo Herald (Miami, FL). This article is in Spanish.
- Time Europe Letter From Colombia: Talking Peace, Making War
This site is designed and maintained by Michael Smith of gci275 Studio.