Guatemalan 'baby factory' deals in misery and hope

£700 for a child? Guatemalan 'baby factory' deals in misery and hope

US under pressure to curb trade as 1% of state's babies go abroad

Jo Tuckman in Guatemala City
Wednesday March 14, 2007
The Guardian


Caretaker Virginia de Mendez holds Jose Alberto, a 15-month-old baby in process of adoption, at her home in Guatemala City. Last year 4,943 children were adopted by foreigners with fees of between $20,000 and $30,000 for each adoption. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/AP

With its obsequious doormen and bland interior, the Guatemala City Marriott could be just another business hotel anywhere in the world. If it weren't for all the babies.

"Ooooh, you beautiful little girl," one prospective mother from Virginia coos as she lifts a nine-month-old above her head. The pianist in the lobby is playing Beatles ballads, the new father of another infant orders a club sandwich at the next table, and a third baby is pushed past in a buggy. "You're not mine yet, but you will be soon."

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Last year 4,943 Guatemalan children - more than 1% of the country's newborns - were adoptyourd by foreigners, the vast majority of them Americans. Guatemala was the second-most important country of origin after China for children adopted abroad by US citizens.

"There is a lot of money to be made and Guatemala has become a baby factory," says Byron Alvarado of the Guatemalan group Movement for Children. With fees of between $20,000-$30,000 (£10,000-£15,000) for every adoption, between $100m and $140m changed hands last year.

"The adopting parents either don't know, or don't want to know, where the children they are adopting come from," he adds.

Teenager Glendy's story is one of thousands that expose the seedier side of the business. Eighteen years old, dumped by her married boyfriend and with below-average intelligence, Glendy described how she was contacted while she was pregnant by some people who promised her 10,000 Quetzales (about £700) for her baby. Desperately poor, she accepted the offer.

Taken away

Her baby was delivered by a midwife in the provincial city of Retalhuleu. Mother and son spent one night together and then he was taken away.

They were briefly reunited a few days later when they boarded a bus bound for the capital with a female minder. The infant was handed over to another woman at a petrol station en route. "I didn't cry when I said goodbye," Glendy remembered. "I waited until I got back on the bus."

After a night in Guatemala City yet another intermediary took her to the shelter where she had lived as a teenager. The man told her to pretend they were getting married in order to retrieve documents needed for the adoption. But, having second thoughts about giving her baby away, Glendy spilled the beans. The minder slipped out of the building and disappeared taking with him the secret of where Glendy's baby was hidden.

Little has been done to stem the flow of Guatemalan adoptions, with the numbers quadrupling between 1997 and last year. Few other countries offer children so young or so quickly to prospective parents. Last year 90% of the country's adopted children were under a year old when they left the country.

But the issue is coming to a head this year as the US prepares to ratify the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption and is consequently coming under international pressure to stop issuing visas to Guatemalan-born children, unless Guatemala implements a proper process of adoption.

In most countries adoption is managed by judges, bureaucrats and social workers. In Guatemala private lawyers run the show. They control the available infants offered to US-based adoption agencies, and they also submit the proposed adoptions for approval by the Guatemalan state institutions.

"All the state does in most cases is check that the right documents are in the file," admits Josefina Arellano, who heads the department that signs off on adoptions. "We rarely investigate the content of the documents, or how they were obtained." Many receiving countries, including the US and the UK, now require DNA testing of the mother and the baby to discourage baby snatching.

Rumours of child stealers roaming the country were common about 10 years ago, along with stories of substitute mothers signing the consent forms.

But activists say DNA tests cannot detect more sophisticated strategies such as sending envoys out to recruit vulnerable women such as Glendy with offers of help and cash, and keeping them in line with threats if they change their mind. Nor can the tests identify women who are repeatedly getting pregnant with the intention of giving away their kids for money. Mr Alvarado favours a moratorium but fears the US government may bend to pressure from the domestic adoption lobby fearful that deserving families could be left without a child. Guateadopt.com insists adoption can give Guatemalan children futures they could never otherwise dream of. "The children of Guatemala need you now," it says on its website.

DNA tests

Stevan Whitehead, who has two Guatemalan-born children and runs an inter-country adoption support group in Britain agrees. "Let's face it, the life of Guatemalan women is quite hard enough without all of that [ruthless operators] to push them to adoption," he says. Inter-country adoption is a rarity in Britain. Only 24 children were adopted from Guatemala last year, putting the country in equal second place with Russia.

The UK side of the procedures is rigorous, with the consul interviewing all birth mothers, in addition to DNA tests being carried out. Mr Whitehead says the British parents of Guatemalan-born children that he knows have tried to establish contact with their children's birth mothers.

Seven US adoptive parents last week felt differently. They had little desire for contact, they said, and no reason to question the vague accounts they had been given of young poverty-stricken women unable to cope: women just like Glendy who had so easily slipped into a deal she now regrets.