Eyder Peralta

Eyder Peralta is an international correspondent for NPR. He was named NPR's Mexico City correspondent in 2022. Before that, he was based in Cape Town, South Africa. He started his journalism career as a pop music critic and after a few newspaper stints, he joined NPR in 2008.

In his career, Peralta has reported from more than 20 countries on four continents. In 2022, his coverage of East Africa was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the Audio Reporting category.

Peralta joined NPR as associate producer, working his way up to become an international correspondent in 2016.

While based in Nairobi, Kenya, and then Cape Town, South Africa, he crisscrossed the African continent. He's interviewed presidents, covered resistance movements, civil war, Ebola and the coronavirus pandemic. He spent years reporting a profile on the most vulgar woman in Uganda. He wrote about house music in South Africa, the joy of mango season in Kenya, a baby elephant boom, hyenas and even how he ended up jailed for four days in South Sudan.

On occasion, he was dispatched to other regions, including Venezuela and Ukraine to cover the Russian invasion.

Previously, Peralta reported breaking news for NPR based out of Washington, D.C., where he covered everything from the American rapprochement with Cuba to natural disasters to the national debates on policing and immigration.

In 2009 and 2014, Peralta was part of the NPR teams that received the George Foster Peabody Award. His 2016 investigative feature on the death of Philando Castile was honored by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Society for News Design.

Peralta was born amid a civil war in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. His parents fled when he was child and they settled in Miami. Peralta graduated with a journalism degree from Florida International University.

He is married to writer and author Cynthia Leonor Garza. They have three young daughters, who occasionally do their own reporting. [Copyright 2025 NPR]