Europe Correspondent

Gerry Hadden is an author and journalist who began his public radio career in 1995 at public radio KPLU in Seattle. In 2000 National Public Radio sent him (along with The World’s Aaron Schachter) to Los Angeles. Later that year Hadden headed further south, to Mexico City. From 2000 to 2004 he served as NPR’s Mexico, Central America and Caribbean correspondent. During that time he covered presidential elections in Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti and Nicaragua. He reported extensively on immigration, drug trafficking, and the varied cultures and characters of Latin America. He also traveled frequently to Cuba where he reported on U.S. Cuba relations, the economy, the arts as well as on daily life under Fidel Castro. In 2004, four years after watching Jean Bertrande Aristide be sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Hadden covered his flight from power amidst an armed rebellion.

In 2004 Hadden moved with his family back to his ‘second home,’ Spain. From Barcelona he covers Spain and Europe for The World, though his stories have taken him as far as Cape Verde, Istanbul and Kiev. Hadden says that besides driving a taxi in New York reporting for public radio is the most interesting job he’s ever had. When he’s not reporting he spends time with his partner, Anne, and their two children, Lula and Nino.

Hadden’s memoir of his years in Latin America with NPR was published in Spring 2011 by HarperCollins. It’s called Never the Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti.