Bear Witness
The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (16:24). When I talk about this passage with my students, I emphasize that our contemporary use of the phrase “my cross to bear” often refers to a litany of ordinary struggles, obscuring the radical call this passage makes. The point is that discipleship comes at a cost. A radical commitment to the gospel will bring us into conflict with powerful, sinful forces. This could even, as it did for Jesus, cost us our lives.
In Bear Witness, investigative journalist Ross Halperin tells the story of Kurt Ver Beek and Carlos Hernández, two friends who bear the high costs of discipleship as they run their NGO in Honduras. The two come from vastly different contexts: Kurt is a White man from the Chicago suburbs, while Carlos is Honduran, from the coastal lowlands. They met as young men in Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s capital city. Carlos moved there after giving up a rural teaching position, unsure what he wanted to do but knowing he wanted something more. Kurt came shortly after college, on assignment from the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee. Despite their different backgrounds, they shared a deep conviction that their Christian faith called them to work to build a better world, alleviate suffering, and attend to people’s material needs. This drive led them to become cofounders of the Association for a More Just Society, the NGO at the heart of Halperin’s narrative.
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Modeled after the life of Jesus and the courage of the early Christian martyrs, Kurt and Carlos aim to embody and encourage a “love-conquers-fear ethos” at ASJ (short for the organization’s Spanish name). Wholehearted love for others, Kurt argues, ought to allow us to overcome any fear. This is not an argument made in abstraction. ASJ’s mission is to pursue justice in Honduras, especially for the poor. Their work has focused especially on Nueva Suyapa, an impoverished and often dangerous neighborhood in Tegucigalpa.
Halperin’s narrative begins in 2005 when, after witnessing a rise in crime, Kurt and Carlos came to believe that their neighbors were in great need of protection from gang violence. The central problem, they observed, was that the gang members’ crimes were rarely reported—and even when they were, a lack of witnesses willing to testify usually meant the perpetrators were back on the streets in no time. To address this, Kurt and Carlos launched a project within ASJ called the Secret Group. Eventually renamed the Peace and Justice Project, the initiative brought together a lawyer, an investigator, and a psychologist to help “bridge the crevasse between witnesses and law enforcement,” writes Halperin. If the justice system was unable to keep Nueva Suyapa safe on its own, Kurt and Carlos would find a way to fill in the gaps.
This decision sets Kurt, Carlos, and their collaborators on a path that brings them face-to-face with danger and loss. It also often leaves them with the difficult task of finding the line between idealism and practicality. As their efforts draw them deeper into the mire of a corrupt and violent political landscape, they must weigh the importance of achieving their goals against costs to their integrity. Halperin does not shy away from these moral dilemmas and uncertainties. Instead, he regularly draws the reader’s attention to the “ethical land mine[s]” the men face and provides the perspectives of their supporters as well as their critics. When introducing one pivotal event in the story, Halperin highlights a suggestion from one of Kurt’s former students that the two were driven more by a “need to prove themselves strong and courageous” than by selfless love.
“Is attempting to save others vainglorious?” Halperin asks. “And justice, that pillar of modern civilization—to what extent is it just ol’-fashioned payback dolled up with robes, gavels, and wood-paneled walls?”
Questions like these appear throughout the book and frame the narrative. Is it right for Kurt and Carlos to put not only their own lives but the lives of their families, their collaborators, and others at risk? Does Christian discipleship require absolute fearlessness, or is caution in the face of danger also a legitimate expression of faith?
There are also questions about the means that can and should be used to achieve good ends. “Meting out justice is ethically complex, always,” Halperin reflects early in the book, a claim that is borne out repeatedly throughout the story. Kurt and Carlos’s efforts to protect their neighbors from gang violence revolve around ensuring that violent gang members are arrested and convicted. Because many of the gang members are minors, this means placing children in the hands of an incarceration system that Kurt and Carlos know to be unsafe and riddled with abuses of power.
“Are we stupid? Are we crazy? In the end, is this ethical?” Kurt finds himself wondering. “We have to get these guys off the street, because they’re just going to keep killing” becomes a mantra he clings to in such moments of moral discomfort.
The strength of this book is that these questions arise not from the safe distance of intellectual debate but from Kurt and Carlos’s gritty reckoning with the lives and needs of their neighbors. “When you live outside the community,” Carlos reflects, “you can think about things like human rights in a more theoretical fashion. . . . Being a human rights defender inside the community is different. When you are inside, you justify certain things, up to a certain point.” Halperin’s embedded style of reporting allows moral dilemmas to linger unanswered.
As a Christian ethicist, I admit I felt some trepidation picking up this book. I worried the story might feed a White savior complex common among Christians from the Global North. As someone who studies immigration, I was also concerned that, without the proper care and contextualization, the book’s accounts of corruption and danger in Central America would simply confirm the perception that migrants are dangerous others against whom the United States must deploy harsh and militaristic immigration policies.
We should recognize that corruption is not unique to Central America; plenty can be found in our own halls of power. It is also important to recall that conditions like those in Honduras do not arise in a vacuum. There is a long history behind the violence, poverty, and corruption Kurt and Carlos face—a history of colonialism in which White Christian hubris played a significant role. We should remember the harm these impulses, even when well intentioned, have caused. This is a crucial context not only for understanding modern Honduras but for guarding against White saviorism.
To his credit, Halperin navigates around these potential pitfalls fairly well. Kurt, he reports, is aware of and works to avoid embodying common, unhelpful “do-gooder archetypes” (including the White savior) and does not gloss over the moral complexity of his privilege and his outsider status. Early in the story, Kurt reflects that while he does not view attempting to improve his adopted homeland as inherently problematic, he is not yet qualified to do the work. His efforts to become so qualified included spending months living in a remote part of the country, interviewing people, and participating in the daily life of the village. As a professor, he taught his students that if they wanted to address poverty, they first needed to experience it. He and his wife, Jo Ann, walked the walk, moving from a middle-class neighborhood to Nueva Suyapa to be more fully embedded in the community they wanted to serve. Halperin presents Kurt as someone who has worked to truly understand Honduras and the difficulties the people face, and who intentionally partners with Hondurans in his justice work.
This does not erase the reality of Kurt’s privileges. “His skin, education, job, and passport all put him at a major advantage to his neighbors,” says Halperin, but he grapples with this reality on the page, which is beneficial.
Overall, Halperin steers clear of an oversimplified narrative framing. Dangerous people are presented as such but also shown to be fully human, nuanced, and complex. The circumstances that might drive a child like Chelito to become a violent teenage gang leader are explored. Space is given on the page to the families of victims and perpetrators alike. We are left to form our own judgments about these stories and the people in them.
Halperin also makes a clear effort to put the realities of Honduras, and of Central American migration, into a broader context. While at times a more pointed critique of US actions and the role we have had in creating the conditions that drive migration could have been appropriate, Halperin’s more modest approach may have a broader reach. Brief references to the history of questionable US actions in Central America, including collaboration “with flawed heads of state,” are peppered throughout the book, inviting readers to interrogate many of the narratives surrounding immigration today. Given the state of immigration discourse and policy in the United States, such interrogation is more important than ever.
