Samuel Gómez

Samuel Gómez

Samuel Gómez is a Latin America correspondent at The New York Times.

What I Cover

I cover Latin America — its politics, culture, and the stories of the people who live through both. My beat runs from Chile to Mexico, from Caribbean ports to Andean highland towns, with music and popular culture as a constant thread. When a festival shuts down a city, when a new artist breaks across borders, when a diaspora finds its sound in a foreign country — those are my stories. They are also dispatches about identity, aspiration and what the region is becoming.

My Background

I was born in Venezuela and grew up between Caracas and the llanos, where my grandmother kept the radio on all day and my father's cassette collection covered everything from Simón Díaz to Rubén Blades. I studied journalism at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and left in 2011 as the country's crisis deepened, joining what would become one of the largest diasporas in the Western Hemisphere.

I settled in Santiago, Chile, and spent years reporting on Venezuela's collapse from the outside — interviewing exiles, tracking migration routes, documenting the human cost of a country in free fall. At the same time I embedded myself in Chile's own story: its protests, its music scene, its complicated relationship with memory and modernity. I joined The Times in 2014 and have since reported from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and across the Caribbean. In fourteen years I have covered two World Cups, three consecutive Lollapalooza festivals, the 2019 Chilean uprising, and the emergence of reggaeton and Latin trap as genuinely global phenomena.

Journalistic Ethics

The best journalism about a place comes from correspondents who stay long enough to understand it — and care enough to tell hard truths about it. I report in Spanish, build sources over years and resist the pull of parachute coverage. I believe Latin America deserves the same depth of attention the Times gives to any place that matters. It does.

Contact

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