In 1981, Diederich moved to TIME's newly opened Caribbean Bureau in Miami, Florida, from which he continued to cover the violent, gunfire-punctuated events that still plagued the region. He was one of the first correspondents to manage to file dispatches from Grenada following the 1983U.S. military invasion of that nutmeg island. And he was finally able to return to Haiti, in his role as foreign correspondent, following the demise of the Duvalier dynasty with the departure in 1986 of Papa Doc's son and successor, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier.

However, it was by no means an uneventful return; during the island nation's post-Duvalier instability and chaos, Diederich and his photographer son, J.B., came close to being killed several times when gunmen of an interim military regime attacked and fired on crowds of demonstrators in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

During his professional career as a journalist and author, Bernard Diederich has won many distinctions. They include: The 1976 Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal conferred by Columbia University in New York; the 1983 Overseas Press Club's Mary Hemingway citation for the best reporting from abroad; the 2003 James Nelson Goodsell Award conferred by Florida International University; and the Caonabo de Oro 2003 by the Dominican Journalist Association..

© 2004 - 2008 Bernard Diederich