Bear witness The pursuit of justice in a violent land

Built atop the municipal garbage dump in Tegucigalpa after Hurricane Fifi in 1974, Nueva Suyapa is considered one of the poorest and most dangerous barrios in the Honduran capital. Fed up with the fear that gripped their community, two friends and nonprofit workers, American sociologist Kurt Ver Beek and Honduran schoolteacher Carlos Hernández, banded together to form a secret group to help end the violence and corruption. Their goal was to track down as many witnesses as possible and convince them to testify. In this gripping work of investigative journalism, Halperin examines the risks, sacrifices, and criticisms these unlikely saviors endured in making their neighborhood a safer place to raise a family. Reflecting on the experience, Ver Beek recalls, "We had no idea if it would work, or if we would get ourselves killed. We also had no money, so we were willing to be creative and brave--or, as some would say, a little bit crazy." Halperin's skillful reporting and insight and his own risk-taking make Ver Beek and Hernández's story unforgettable.

A harrowing look at the gang violence that grips Honduras. Criminal justice scholar Halperin began to travel to Honduras a decade ago, tracking the work of a group called the Association for a More Just Society. Located in a Tegucigalpa ghetto, ASJ "had been doing a hodgepodge of heartwarming but unspectacular good works like helping poor families procure land titles and helping abused wives get divorced." But now the group was turning to a far more fraught project, namely battling a gang that terrorized the 50,000 people of Nueva Suyapa. Improbably, one leader, called Chelito, was just 12 years old, but he was harder than most death row inmates: "Part of his legend was the way he consistently yo-yoed from the barrio to police custody and back, as though he were the Honduran Houdini." Carlos del Cid, an evangelist who, with American sociologist Kurt Ver Beek, founded ASJ, knew Chelito, "one of the many kids Carlos tried to steer away from street life," but that was no protection. Indeed, for just that reason, ASJ morphed from a Christian social service agency to a squad of crimefighters, a curious transformation with an understandable backstory: Hondurans were afraid to inform on the thousands of gang members who lived among them, the police and courts were corrupt, and if justice were to be served it would have to be done by local people themselves, providing evidence and testimony. Small wonder that so many Hondurans are desperate to leave their homeland for safety in Mexico and the U.S., fleeing a country whose very president was likely involved in the drug trade, which in no way makes him "an outlier within the uppermost echelons of Honduran politics." Del Cid and Ver Beek, conversely, are clear outliers, but, Halperin concludes, "their two-plus decades of all--in altruism, all--in courage, and all-in faith have not gotten them anywhere close to a satisfying conclusion." Smart, thoughtful reporting from the trenches. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.