Speaker > Biography

Andres Oppenheimer

International Journalist
Miami

Andres Oppenheimer is the Latin American editor and foreign affairs columnist with The Miami Herald. His syndicated column, The Oppenheimer Report, appears twice a week in The Miami Herald and more than 40 U.S. and Latin American newspapers, including La Nacion of Argentina and Reforma of Mexico. He is a regular political analyst with CNN en Español, and a frequent guest at PBS' Jim Lehrer News Hour.

His previous jobs at The Miami Herald included Mexico City bureau chief, foreign correspondent, and business writer. He previously worked for five years with The Associated Press in New York, and has contributed on a free-lance basis to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, CBS News, and the BBC.

He is the co-winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize as a member of The Miami Herald team that uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. He won the Inter-American Press Association Award twice (1989 and 1994); the 1997 award of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; the 1993 Ortega y Gasset Award of Spain's daily El País; the 1998 Maria Moors Cabot Award of Columbia University; the 2001 King of Spain Award, given out by the Spanish news agency EFE and King Juan Carlos I of Spain; and an Overseas Press Club Award in 2002. The Ortega y Gasset and the King of Spain awards are the two most prestigious journalism awards in the Spanish-speaking world.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he studied law for four years at the University of Buenos Aires' Law School, and moved to the United States in 1976 with a fellowship from the World Press Institute. Afer a year at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he obtained a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York in 1978.

Oppenheimer's first book, "Castro's Final Hour: An eyewitness account of the disintegration of Castro's Cuba" (Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 1993) was described by Bob Woodward, of The Washington Post, as "a spectacular job of reporting , investigating and observing," and by The Dallas Morning News as "the definitive book on Cuba in the past decade."

His second book, "Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockholders, Politicians and Mexico's Road to Prosperity" was profiled by CBS' "60 Minutes" in June, 1996, and by PBS' Frontline in May, 1997. "Bordering on Chaos" was described by Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" as "A fascinating account of political and financial corruption in Mexico," and was selected by The Los Angeles Times' Book Review as one of the "best books" of that year. The Los Angeles Times review concluded, "Not only a must read, a great read."

His third book, "Crónicas de Héroes y Bandidos," (Editorial Grijalbo, Mexico, 1998) a collection of reports from various Latin American countries over the past two decades, was a best-seller in Mexico and several other Latin American countries.

His fourth book, "Ojos Vendados: Estados Unidos y el Negocio de la Corrupción en América Latina" (Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 2001; and Plaza & Janes, Mexico, 2001), on the role of U.S. corporations in recent Latin American corruption scandals, topped Argentina's list of best-sellers in May, 2001, and was on the best-sellers' list in Mexico and several other Latin American countries in 2001 and 2002.

Oppenheimer was selected by the Forbes Media Guide as one of the “500 most important journalists” of the United States in 1993, and by Poder magazine as one of the “100 most powerful people” in Latin America in 2002.