Faces of NPR *Latin Heritage Month*: Eyder Peralta

Faces Of NPR showcases the people behind NPR--from the voices you hear every day on the radio to the ones who work outside of the recording studio. You'll find out about what they do and what they're inspired by on the daily. This month, we feature NPR's Latin community. Next up is Eyder Peralta.

The Basics:

Name: Eyder Peralta

Title: International Correspondent

Where you're from: Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Twitter Handle: @Eyderp

Your time in South Africa just ended, how was your experience covering South Africa?

I did. It was really great in some ways. You know, it's an incredibly complicated country that reminds me a lot of the United States. The racial dynamics are very similar. The political dynamics are very similar, except that everything in South Africa is super magnified. And so, you know, it was really interesting to dig into a country that seemed so similar to my own country in the United States. It's sort of almost like stepping back to what I imagine the U.S. was like during the civil rights period. One of the things that was really interesting as a Latino, is that we lived in Cape Town and there's a huge colored community there – the word colored is not a pejorative down there. It is used. It refers to mixed people. Mestizos, which is what we would call ourselves in Latin America. And so it was really interesting because in a lot of the colored people, I saw my own family.