A window into the illegal adoption racket? The ''disappearance'' of Mayra Gutiérrez
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A window into the illegal adoption racket? The ''disappearance'' of Mayra Gutiérrez
According to a ground-breaking report published by ODHAG in August 2000, Guatemala's illegal adoption racket grew out of the civil conflict, when it became ''fashionable'' for officers, soldiers and civil patrollers to ''adopt'' young children whom they found wandering about after their families had been killed or abducted. Many of these children were treated as unpaid child servants. Other children orphaned or separated from their families in the conflict were treated as ''war booty'' and sold for adoption.
When it became clear how lucrative the trade in children for adoption could be, the number offered for adoption, particularly abroad, spiralled upwards. Today, more Guatemalan children are adopted than from any other country in Latin America and this tiny country is fourth in the world in numbers of children adopted abroad. As many as 98 per cent of all those adopted are adopted outside Guatemala; 80 per cent of them illegally.(15) Some of the children are offered in sale by their destitute families; others are stolen from their mothers' arms, provided with false papers and smuggled abroad. The 200 or so lawyers involved in the baby business are said to charge an average of $25,000 to foreign couples seeking to adopt, and state officials and their families are reportedly involved and determined to protect their large profits.
One victim of this lucrative trade may have been university professor and social activist Mayra Angelina Gutiérrez Hernández, who ''disappeared'' in April 2000, the first ''disappearance'' known to AI since mid-1999 and only the third since 1994.
Mayra Gutiérrez set off as normal on 7 April to catch the bus to Huehuetenango Department where she taught a weekly university class. She has not been seen since. Local observers were concerned that her ''disappearance'' signalled a return to one of the most reprehensible repressive tactics of the past.
Like their military predecessors, the authorities first denied that Mayra Gutiérrez had ''disappeared'' for political reasons, insisting she had run off or been killed by a married lover. These suggestions were totally rejected by her family, including her 17-year-old daughter.
It was then learned that Mayra Gutiérrez' name appeared on a database apparently compiled by military intelligence during the 1980s, and made public in May 2000 by Edgar Gutiérrez (no relation), the President's Secretary of Strategic Affairs. Reportedly, Edgar Gutiérrez found the list on a government computer, and published it to deflect criticism after killings of protestors in the capital in April 2000. More than six per cent of the population appeared on this list of ''suspected subversives'' - 650,428 names - each accompanied by a coded number, apparently referring to their status, for example under surveillance, detained and released or ''disappeared.''
Initially, friends and colleagues suggested that Mayra Gutiérrez may have been targeted because of her affiliation to the University of San Carlos, a long-term target of political repression, or as further reprisal against her politically active family, which had already suffered two ''disappearances'' in the 1980s. They also wondered whether her activism on women's issues, including research on the illegal adoption racket, explained her ''disappearance.'' Her findings were compiled in a report naming those allegedly involved, which she provided to the UN's Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, during the latter's 1999 mission to Guatemala. The Special Rapporteur's subsequent report covered the adoption racket. It was presented to the UN Human Rights Commission and received considerable publicity in Guatemala just days before Mayra Gutiérrez went missing.
Threats around the same time against staff of an agency assisting would-be immigrants to the USA, whose work along borders made them privy to information on the adoption racket, also supported the case that it may have been those involved in the racket who lay behind Mayra Gutiérrez' ''disappearance''.
In December 2000, apparently in response to continued pressure on the case, Congress named Guatemala's Human Rights Procurator as special investigator. He has favoured the theory that Mayra Gutiérrez was abducted by a thwarted former lover, even though the man in question (not a Guatemalan) has made available air tickets, receipts, and phone bills to show that he was not in Guatemala at the time. He has now fled with his family.
According to a ground-breaking report published by ODHAG in August 2000, Guatemala's illegal adoption racket grew out of the civil conflict, when it became ''fashionable'' for officers, soldiers and civil patrollers to ''adopt'' young children whom they found wandering about after their families had been killed or abducted. Many of these children were treated as unpaid child servants. Other children orphaned or separated from their families in the conflict were treated as ''war booty'' and sold for adoption.
When it became clear how lucrative the trade in children for adoption could be, the number offered for adoption, particularly abroad, spiralled upwards. Today, more Guatemalan children are adopted than from any other country in Latin America and this tiny country is fourth in the world in numbers of children adopted abroad. As many as 98 per cent of all those adopted are adopted outside Guatemala; 80 per cent of them illegally.(15) Some of the children are offered in sale by their destitute families; others are stolen from their mothers' arms, provided with false papers and smuggled abroad. The 200 or so lawyers involved in the baby business are said to charge an average of $25,000 to foreign couples seeking to adopt, and state officials and their families are reportedly involved and determined to protect their large profits.
One victim of this lucrative trade may have been university professor and social activist Mayra Angelina Gutiérrez Hernández, who ''disappeared'' in April 2000, the first ''disappearance'' known to AI since mid-1999 and only the third since 1994.
Mayra Gutiérrez set off as normal on 7 April to catch the bus to Huehuetenango Department where she taught a weekly university class. She has not been seen since. Local observers were concerned that her ''disappearance'' signalled a return to one of the most reprehensible repressive tactics of the past.
Like their military predecessors, the authorities first denied that Mayra Gutiérrez had ''disappeared'' for political reasons, insisting she had run off or been killed by a married lover. These suggestions were totally rejected by her family, including her 17-year-old daughter.
It was then learned that Mayra Gutiérrez' name appeared on a database apparently compiled by military intelligence during the 1980s, and made public in May 2000 by Edgar Gutiérrez (no relation), the President's Secretary of Strategic Affairs. Reportedly, Edgar Gutiérrez found the list on a government computer, and published it to deflect criticism after killings of protestors in the capital in April 2000. More than six per cent of the population appeared on this list of ''suspected subversives'' - 650,428 names - each accompanied by a coded number, apparently referring to their status, for example under surveillance, detained and released or ''disappeared.''
Initially, friends and colleagues suggested that Mayra Gutiérrez may have been targeted because of her affiliation to the University of San Carlos, a long-term target of political repression, or as further reprisal against her politically active family, which had already suffered two ''disappearances'' in the 1980s. They also wondered whether her activism on women's issues, including research on the illegal adoption racket, explained her ''disappearance.'' Her findings were compiled in a report naming those allegedly involved, which she provided to the UN's Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, during the latter's 1999 mission to Guatemala. The Special Rapporteur's subsequent report covered the adoption racket. It was presented to the UN Human Rights Commission and received considerable publicity in Guatemala just days before Mayra Gutiérrez went missing.
Threats around the same time against staff of an agency assisting would-be immigrants to the USA, whose work along borders made them privy to information on the adoption racket, also supported the case that it may have been those involved in the racket who lay behind Mayra Gutiérrez' ''disappearance''.
In December 2000, apparently in response to continued pressure on the case, Congress named Guatemala's Human Rights Procurator as special investigator. He has favoured the theory that Mayra Gutiérrez was abducted by a thwarted former lover, even though the man in question (not a Guatemalan) has made available air tickets, receipts, and phone bills to show that he was not in Guatemala at the time. He has now fled with his family.
2002 Feb 28