Never the Hope Itself

Gerry Hadden was ready to become a Buddhist monk and was, in fact, preparing for a three-year meditative retreat when opportunity came knocking. He was offered his dream job to become NPR's correspondent for Mexico, Latin America, and Haiti. The robes could wait.

Hadden arrives in 2000 to witness Mexico's first democratic alternation of power. In Washington, George W. Bush declares the new century the "Century of the Americas." The political atmosphere is all at once filled with hope, uncertainty, and dread. Following 9/11, however, Latin America is abruptly wiped from America's agenda. But in this forgotten landscape, Hadden's beat goes on. He documents overlooked and extraordinary events even as most foreign news bureaus shut down. Smugglers move guns across Central America to Colombian rebels. Latino immigrants stream to the American border in near record numbers as their home economies collapse. And in Haiti, inhuman conditions and human joy miraculously, tenuously coexist, even as a bloody rebellion throws its capitol into chaos.

Never the Hope Itself chronicles a region in turmoil; telling students the first-hand stories from one of our nation's greatest correspondents.