Carrie Kahn
Carrie Kahn is NPR's International Correspondent based in Mexico City, Mexico. She covers Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Kahn's reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning news programs including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, and on NPR.org.
Since arriving in Mexico in the summer of 2012, on the eve of the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI party's return to power, Kahn has reported on everything from the rise in violence throughout the country to its powerful drug cartels, and the arrest, escape and re-arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. She has reported on the Trump Administration's immigration policies and their effects on Mexico and Central America, the increasing international migration through the hemisphere, gang violence in Central America and the historic détente between the Obama Administration and Cuba.
Kahn has brought moving, personal stories to the forefront of NPR's coverage of the region. Some of her most notable coverage includes the stories of a Mexican man who was kidnapped and forced to dig a cross-border tunnel from Tijuana into San Diego, a Guatemalan family torn apart by President Trump's family separation policies and a Haitian family's situation immediately following the 2010 earthquake and on the ten-year anniversary of the disaster.
Prior to her post in Mexico, Kahn was a National Correspondent based in Los Angeles. She was the first NPR reporter into Haiti after the devastating earthquake in early 2010, and returned to the country on numerous occasions to continue NPR's coverage of the Caribbean nation. In 2005, Kahn was part of NPR's extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina, where she investigated claims of euthanasia in New Orleans hospitals, recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast and resettlement of city residents in Houston, Texas.
She has covered hurricanes, the controversial life and death of pop icon Michael Jackson and firestorms and mudslides in Southern California,. In 2008, as China hosted the world's athletes, Kahn recorded a remembrance of her Jewish grandfather and his decision to compete in Hitler's 1936 Olympics.
Before coming to NPR in 2003, Kahn worked for NPR Member stations KQED and KPBS in California, with reporting focused on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kahn is a recipient of the 2020 Cabot Prize from Columbia Journalism School, which honors distinguished reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2010 she was awarded the Headliner Award for Best in Show and Best Investigative Story for her work covering U.S. informants involved in the Mexican Drug War. Kahn's work has been cited for fairness and balance by the Poynter Institute of Media Studies. She was awarded and completed a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism at Johns Hopkins University.
Kahn received a bachelor's degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz. For several years, she was a human genetics researcher in California and in Costa Rica. She has traveled extensively throughout Mexico, Central America, Europe and the Middle East, where she worked on an English/Hebrew/Arabic magazine.
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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government insists the country has low numbers of cases and deaths from the pandemic. A grassroots group is working to reveal the true impact is far worse.
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Some Mexicans with family ties or dual citizenship in the U.S., or who can afford the airfare, head north of the border to get vaccinated faster than the months of waiting for one back home.
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U.S. tourists aren't welcome in most countries because of the surging coronavirus. But Mexico lets them in, with no quarantine or test requirements.
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The center of the Category 4 storm, packing winds of 145 mph, is moving toward the coast Tuesday morning. It's expected to dump torrential rains in the country's poorest region.
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Democratic lawmakers are demanding more information from the Trump administration about U.S. agents working in Guatemala to round up Honduran migrants and send them to the Guatemala-Honduras border.
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Retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos was allegedly known as"El Padrino" and worked on behalf of a deadly criminal organization while he was defense chief from 2012 to 2018, according to a court filing.
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Mauricio Claver-Carone is the first U.S. citizen to be nominated to lead the region's premier development funder, which provides $12 billion a year for projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Cuba has opened stores for shoppers with U.S. dollars and dropped a tax on dollar transactions. The government is trying to pull the country out of a deep economic slump, made worse by the pandemic.
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The Jalisco New Generation Cartel dominates fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking and is linked to various assassinations. But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says, "We will not declare war."
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Andrés Manuel López Obrador's critics say he's making a mistake by going to Washington and is giving in to the U.S. president's whims. But López Obrador says, "We are going ... with our heads high."