Frances Robles Will Join International Desk Full Time

Known universally as Frenchie, she has already won ample acclaim for her work on International. She was the first to interview the first lady of Haiti after the president's assassination, delivering a riveting deadline account of the killing that sent shockwaves around the world. The story was a central part of the team coverage that won a Polk Award and became a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Then, just this month, Frenchie won a prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Prize for her career covering the Western Hemisphere.

"Print her decades' worth of stories and put them in chronological order between covers - you would hold in your hands the story of Latin America in our time," Manny Fernandez, the deputy political editor of The Times, wrote about Frenchie in the prize nomination letter. "The reporter who produced this body of work can be summed up in a single word: tenacious."

He added: "Frenchie digs. And digs. And digs some more."

Frenchie joined The Times in 2013 after 19 years at The Miami Herald, where she covered Cuba and was posted in Nicaragua and Bogotá. She did a stint on Metro, where she quickly won a George Polk Award, having spent her first year at The Times investigating the practices of a New York City homicide detective. She showed how he had manufactured confessions and coached witnesses to lie. At last count, 18 homicide convictions had been overturned because of her reporting.

Frenchie has spent the past decade splitting her time between the National desk and International, covering Central America and the Caribbean for International. She wrote about children fleeing gangs in Honduras - and in so doing, went to neighborhoods few dared visit - and chronicled the deterioration of democracy in Nicaragua. And she did it while juggling natural disasters, mass shootings and a variety of Florida-focused investigations for the National desk. She also helped lead National's coverage on breaking news events, including the Pulse massacre in Orlando, a police shooting in North Charleston, S.C., and the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Now, Frenchie will turn her attention fully to Latin America, working with correspondents in the region to focus on Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and other hotspots across the region. She has a particular talent for unearthing voices and accounts from people across Latin America on deadline, whether during hurricanes or political uprisings, and our coverage always benefits greatly from her hustle.

Please join us in welcoming her.