He covered major stories including the 2016 Olympics and 2014 World Cup in Brazil; drug wars in the Andes; deforestation in the Amazon River Basin; guerrilla insurgencies in Colombia, Peru and Paraguay; oil nationalism and political persecution in Venezuela; natural disasters in Haiti; Indigenous politics in Bolivia; and the emerging geopolitics of Antarctica.
Romero was born and raised in New Mexico[1] and graduated from West Las Vegas High School[2] in San Miguel County, N.M.
[3] Romero joined the Times as a contract writer in March 1999, covering economic issues from São Paulo, Brazil.
[4] He subsequently covered telecommunications for the Times from New York from 2000 to 2003 and was a national financial correspondent based in Houston, Texas, from 2003 to 2006, focusing on the international energy industry.
[7] The fund, which launched in 2018 with support from the Pulitzer Center, enables reporting projects focusing on tropical rainforests in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.