Guatemala seeks domestic fix to troubled overseas adoptions

Guatemala seeks domestic fix to troubled overseas adoptions
Central American nation recruiting adoptive and foster parents internally
By Oscar Avila | Tribune correspondent
October 26, 2008

One-year-old Sandra will have to be returned to her parents, a fact that saddens foster parent Claudia Lopez in Guatemala City. (Oscar Avila/Tribune / October 26, 2008)

VILLA NUEVA, Guatemala — At church on Sundays, Juliana Tocay fibs and introduces 3-year-old Katerin as her daughter. The truth is too complicated to explain.

Tocay is Katerin's foster mother, making her family part of a much-watched test of whether this Central American nation can take care of its own needy children.

After essentially closing off the pipeline that sent nearly 5,000 children for adoptions in the U.S. last year, Guatemala has launched an ambitious campaign to recruit foster parents and even adoptive parents at home.

Only a few dozen families are participating and, as Tocay's experience illustrates, it will be a tall order to change the culture of a country that typically views only biological children as true members of the family.
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"Our friends might not understand, but God gave us something so we could give her something," said Tocay, who lives in a tidy subdivision outside Guatemala City with her husband and three children. "And He gives us strength to be strong for her."

For years, children like Katerin, who was abandoned by her mother in Guatemala's rural highlands, would have found their new homes in America. Last year, Guatemala sent more children to the U.S. than any other nation except China.

But nearly everyone agreed that the system was vulnerable to abuse, especially by shadowy middlemen who sometimes paid birth mothers to give up their children.

Amid global pressure, Guatemala passed a law in December that made adoptions part of a government system, taking it out of the hands of lawyers and other private actors.

But as it works to create its new system, Guatemala's new National Adoption Council said in September that it will not accept any new cases. Likewise, the U.S. State Department has stopped processing new adoptions from that country.

U.S. groups that advocate for international adoption have criticized the new law, saying it is creating barriers that keep children away from loving parents. And they have expressed doubts that Guatemala has the resources to properly care for those children.

Nearly 60 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, meaning many families cannot afford another child, although foster parents do receive a stipend. And authorities are bypassing the richest families because children would find it tough to leave luxury to return to their biological families.

Only about 45 families in a nation of 13 million currently have taken in foster children since the program began this year.

"Guatemalans have good intentions, but maybe they don't know how to channel that assistance," said Vilma Masaya, who had oversight of the program as deputy secretary for the Department of Social Welfare. "For us, it is about changing the culture"

Masaya said the recruiting effort is critical because countless children might be shifted from the adoption track into government care if an ongoing investigation detects irregularities in how they were placed for adoption.

Authorities have felt compelled to loosen the requirements for foster parents by allowing single mothers to participate and by raising the maximum age from 55 to 65.

There are signs of progress. By creating satellite offices in far-flung regions, the Department of Social Welfare has already doubled its pool of interested families.

Advocates also are finding success by taking their recruiting pitch directly to the pulpit of evangelical churches that have spread throughout Guatemala. About 90 percent of their families have been recruited from church events, authorities said.

One of those foster mothers, Claudia Lopez, frequently references her spirituality when discussing why she and her husband, Marco, took in a baby girl named Sandra.

Their own daughter died in an auto accident. And when Marco, a fireman, came across a mother who had killed her daughter while committing suicide, they took it as a sign from God that they needed to open their home

Now their Guatemala City home is filled with the giggles of a girl who recently celebrated her first birthday with clowns and piñatas.

But Lopez does not hide her sadness in knowing that Sandra will someday return to her biological family. The government sends social workers for routine visits that help ease the introductions, and eventual farewells, between foster parents and children.

"We love her as if she were our own. She is so sweet, she makes you love her," Lopez said. "At night, I think about saying goodbye. But then I think that somewhere, maybe her mother is crying, too, and that they should be together."

Like many foster children, Sandra had skin ailments caused by living in the close quarters of institutional care. 3-year-old Katerin once wouldn't talk to strangers but now is generous with her hugs.

Social workers say these ailments are part of the toll inflicted on children in institutional care. A study co-funded by the government determined that only 20 percent of the nation's 127 shelters, most of which are private, meet minimum standards.

Dora Alicia Munoz, a UNICEF consultant in Guatemala City, said she is encouraged that the government is working with judges and prosecutors to finally create a system of protection for children that goes beyond institutional care.

UNICEF drew the ire of adoptive parents in the U.S. for its aggressive lobbying for the new law that makes foreign adoptions more difficult.

While insisting that UNICEF is not against all foreign adoptions, Munoz said she hopes foster care can become a temporary alternative to sending the child outside the country.

"Why unlink the child from his family?" Munoz said. "Maybe the mother is in a crisis. The foster family can be a way to give her time to address this crisis and then bring the child back into his mother's arms."

oavila@tribune.com