Bernard Diederich

Bernard Diederich (18 July 1926 – 14 January 2020) was a New Zealand-born author, journalist, and historian.

Diederich was born into an Irish-German family in Christchurch, where his father was a barman at the Empire Hotel. The family moved to rural Mākara, near Wellington, when he was 2, and he lived there until he was 16.

Diederich studied in England in the early postwar years after having participated in World War II in the Pacific. In 1949, Diederich started a sailing trip with two friends that brought him to Haiti, a country that since stayed close to his heart. He stayed and settled down, while his partners continued their trip.

In Port-au-Prince, he founded and edited the Haiti Sun, a weekly English newspaper about Haitian events. As a journalist he also became a freelance correspondent for the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph and others. In the Dominican Republic he established himself as a staff correspondent for Time-Life News.

In 1966 Diederich moved to Mexico working for Time magazine covering Caribbean affairs. In 1981 the office was moved to Miami, and he worked there until his retirement in 1989. later, as a result of their travel along the Haitian border Diederich wrote The Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America 1954–1983, while Greene published The Comedians.

He died at his home in Frères, Port-au-Prince, on 14 January 2020, aged 93.

Awards 1976 Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal, Columbia University in New York 1983 Overseas Press Club's Mary Hemingway citation for the best reporting from abroad 2003 James Nelson Goodsell Award, Florida International University 2003 Caonabo de Oro Award, Dominican Journalist Association

Books Trujillo: Death of the Goat, 1978 Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America, 1981 The Ghosts of Makara: Growing Up Down-Under in a Lost World of Yesteryears, 2002

Bon Papa, 2007 The Prize: Haiti's National Palace, 2007 1959: The Year that Changed Our World, 2007 Bon Papa's Golden Years, 2008 The Price of Blood: History of Repression and Rebellion in Haiti Under Dr François Duvalier, 1957–1962, 2011 The Murderers Among Us: History of Repression and Rebellion in Haiti Under Dr. François Duvalier, 1962–1971, 2011