History and the lessons we learn

In the article Guatemalan Adoptions Suspended by Overseas Crack-Down, an analysis is given about the situation in Guatemala. It states:

The unregulated Guatemalan intercountry adoption process made it an ideal source country, as adoptive parents could add to their family expediently with children of an early age, and since younger children could be assimilated faster into their new family, and begin to relate to what was a novel culture more easily than might be the case with older children. The increasingly favorable outlook on using Guatemala as an originating country is visible in the number of immigrant visas issued to U.S.-adopted Guatemalan orphans between 2002 and 2006. In 2002, over 2400 visas were issued, and just four years later that number had increased by 170 percent to 4135.

Until recently, the requirements that prospective adoptive foreign parents had to affect a Guatemalan adoption were extraordinarily lenient. Age restrictions were set by adoption agencies, not the state, because historically there has been no central adoption authority within Guatemala; nor is there an age limit for adoptive parents. The recommended minimum age is 25, and some of the more stringent adoption agencies require that the youngest parent of a couple be no more than fifty years old. The same aspects that made adopting a Guatemalan child attractive to foreigners may also have been the very factors that has allowed for the increasing levels of illegal activity surrounding intercountry adoptions. It was not too much to say that the adoption process was overwhelmed by lawyers, notaries and buscadoras—also known as ‘facilitators,’ who often shockingly commercialized the process in order to serve their greed.

That is of course a fine analysis of the situation, but isn't it about 24 years late!!!

I found the following report from the American embassy in Guatemala from January 1984, reaching about the same conclusion.

Guatemalan international adoptions can be either completed in Guatemala through a "Notarial deed of adoption" before the child travels, or they can be six-month provisional adoptions. For the later, the adoption is completed in Guatemala after a (U.S.) social worker certifies the satisfactory adjustment during and after the child lives six months with the adoptive parents in their residence (in the United States). Provisional adoption is the invariable arrangement for three reputable adoption organizations in Guatemala, including the government child welfare bureau *"(secretaria de bienestar social) and two private adoption agencies/orphanages. Three other private, government recognized agencies/orphanages always complete the adoptions in Guatemala first, with the notarial final deed. So-called "Private" adoptions, in which an attorney locates a child and completes the legal work to a final adoption—In Guatemala. Are always concluded with this same notarial deed. These two procedures, whether provisional or notarially completed, are the only correct bases at present for the issuance of a Guatemalan passport to a child at the application of a person other than the child‘s own parent(s).

The documentary foundation for the final notarial deed should be relatively reliable, but intrinsic weakness in the civil registration of births may vitiate the validity of the most basic document of the series: the child's original birth certificate. The documentary chain begins with that birth certificate; next is the sole parent's or both parents irrevocable release document. At that point an attorney or agency asks a family court for a "social study by a court-assigned social worker of the biological mother or family circumstances and of the child. The social worker also analyzes the home study done on the adoptive parents. If the resulting recommendation is favorable, the attorney/agency then submits the case to the Ministerio Publico, roughly equivalent to the attorney general‘s office, for review. If they approve, -the lawyer then draws up the final notarial deed, with which he obtains a new birth certificate in the adopting parents' names (the old is supposed to be suppressed but rural civil registrars often don't know that) and the Guatemalan passport in the adoptive surname.

The weakness in civil registration of births is that it is quite possible, and often happens, for a woman not the mother to present herself to the civil registry with a child to register the birth as her child. Hospital birth certificates are not always required and midwife certificates are far from reliable. Hence, one's nephew, or grandchild or a baby found on the street can be passed off as one's own, with little problem; it is of course against Guatemala law thus to falsify a birth registration, but it is done all the time. Footprints, fingerprints, and bloodtests are not part of the process. The opportunities for unscrupulous "Adoption Rings" are quite obvious. The convergence of present Guatemalan adoption, procedures with U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service requirements is sufficiently satisfactory as not to present any serious obstacles to U.S. citizens seeking to adopt from. Guatemala, or any particular clashes between the two bodies of legal practice. The American Embassy issued 105 orphan visas in FY 1982 and 106 in FY 1983.

Guatemalan law on international adoption is scattered through several sections of the legal code. A comprehensive law tightening up current practice was proposed by a distinguished study committee in February 1982. Local attorneys objected because they foresaw they would have fewer clients under the proposed law, which would make all adoptions provisional and would require that adopting parents be approved beforehand by any one of several authorized Guatemalan adoption agencies.

The proposed law does not really indicate a diminution of lawyers' activity, and it remains to be seen whether the requirement of agency approval of intending adopting parents would end the greatest problem in adoptions from Guatemala: the gray legal area that permits caretakers to turn themselves into baby-traffickers, and in which the term "child search fee becomes a euphemism for the price of buying a baby.

This gray area derives from the lack of specific regulation of caretaker status. A kind-hearted woman could theoretically take in an indefinite number of children found abandoned or neglected or handed over by indigent mothers, and effect their adoption quite legally through lawyers of integrity. In practice, the opportunity for a very profitable business (estimated profits per child range from $800 to $12,000 — the latter probably an exaggeration) has been taken up by an unknown number of entrepreneurs. They would not be breaking any law unless they falsified birth registrations by, for example, having one of their servants present herself as a child's mother; unless they kidnapped children or refused to return a child to a natural parent if the parent changed his mind; or bought children; or sold children; or committee crimes such as murder to protect their business -- in which case they might be raided by Guatemalan police and detained, as happened in May and June 1983 to two "adoption rings." Gray becomes even grayer when buying/selling children is euphemized as "paying the mother's hospital costs, paying childcare, giving a little gift to the family, etc." Such a business requires a collaborating lawyer or lawyers to complete the chain of legal work; and though lawyers have been sought and detained by Guatemalan police, they usually extricate themselves successfully by denying knowledge of illegalities. The Embassy has found no sure way to avoid being fooled by apparently good documentation; but by broadening and deepening relations with legitimate agencies, by requiring a copy of the court social worker's report, by investigating any suspect intermediary and by requiring personal interview of the natural mother in certain cases, Embassy appears to have established a reputation as not being an easy mark for the gray market.

(Source: American Embassy Report, l/84)