adoptions in guatemala - protection or business?
The concentration of girls and boys in Guatemala City and places nearby, such as Antigua Guatemala and San Lucas Sacatepéquez, makes sense in the context of adoptions in the country. Guatemala City is convenient because that is where government offices, consulates, notarial and attorney-in-facts’ offices as well as pediatricians’ offices and DNA laboratories are located. Another advantage is the existence of hotels where the future adoptive parents can stay and roads that make it possible for them to go to the houses where the children are cared for or for the children to go to the hotels where foreign couples are staying.
Antigua Guatemala has the same advantages and is also the tourist destination offered by international adoption agencies as part of the adoption package. Another advantage of Antigua Guatemala is that it is located only a 40-minute drive from where the immigration authorities and the international airport are located. San Lucas Sacatepéquez has the advantage of being at an intermediate point between Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala.
In Guatemala City here are 527 cases of girls and boys regarding whom adoption notices have been given, and there are eight areas, called zones, where 89% of these cases are found: zone 18, with 108 children; zone 5 with 69; zone 21 with 56; zones 6 and 7 with 55 each; zone 11 with 25; zone 3 with 21; and zone 10 with 16.
Places of residence of girls and boys who are in the process of adoption
May - August 2007Total number of cases: 1,083 / CUADRO 11
Department / No. of children / Municipality / No. of children
Alta Verapaz / 1
Cobán / 1
Chimaltenango / 6
Chimaltenango / 3
El Tejar / 3
El Progreso / 1
El Progreso / 1
Quetzaltenango / 5
Quetzaltenango / 5
Sacatepéquez / 82
Antigua Guatemala / 45
Ciudad Vieja / 2
Jocotenango / 1
Magdalena Milpas Altas / 1
Pastores / 1
San Antonio Aguas Calientes 1
San Bartolomé Milpas Altas / 2
San Lucas Sacatepéquez / 18
Santa Lucia Milpas Altas / 2
Santiago Sacatepéquez / 5
Santo Domingo Xenacoj / 1
Sumpango / 3
Santa Rosa / 1
Barberena / 1
Sololá / 17
Sololá / 17
Guatemala / 943
Capital / 527
Mixco / 189
Villa Nueva / 65
Petapa / 39
Villa Canales / 32
San José Pinula / 25
San Juan Sacatepéquez / 19
Santa Catarina Pinula / 13
Amatitlán / 12
Chinautla / 5
Palencia / 5
San Pedro Ayampuc / 4
San José del Golfo / 3
Fraijanes / 3
San Pedro Sacatepéquez / 1
San Raymundo / 1
Incomplete address / 27
Source: Files of the Office of the Solicitor General of the Nation, Guatemala, 2007
189 girls and boys in the process of being adopted are reported in Mixco. 82.5% of the places where these children reside are concentrated in five zones: zone 6 with 46 children; zone 11 with 38 girls and boys; zone 1 with 28; zone 5 with 26; and zone 4 with 18 children.
65 girls and boys who are in the process of being adopted live in Villa Nueva. The three zones where most of them reside are 12, 3 and 5, where 45% of the children are concentrated. 39 girls and boys are registered in San Miguel Petapa, where 67% of the children are concentrated in zone 7. 32 girls and boys who are in the process of being adopted live in Villa Canales. 65% of the cases are concentrated in zones 1 and 2 of that municipality. 69 girls and boys in the process of being adopted live in San José Pinula, San Juan Sacatepéquez, Santa Catarina Pinula and Amatitlán están ubicados 69 children y niñas en proceso de adopción. There are between 1 and 5 children in the remaining municipalities.
The mapping that was done based on the adoption files made it possible to establish the existence of “crèche neighborhoods” and “crèche sectors”. Creche neighborhoods are those containing family homes in the same neighborhood, where girls and boys are cared for until they are handed over to their adoptive parents. Creche sectors are clusters of neighborhoods where girls and boys who will be given up for adoption live. Creche sectors are also found outside of condominiums and neighborhoods, and the link is determined by the closeness among the addresses.
Typically, most crèche sectors and neighborhoods lack government control. People who live in these sectors and neighborhoods have been impacted by inflationary pressures. In spit of that they have a home, usually solidly built and with the required services, but there is crowding, with an average number of 4.5 inhabitants. In these homes, adult women who have a low educational level are part of the economically inactive population. They cannot get paid jobs that would enable them to improve their standard of living. They are offered earnings of 500 to 3,000 quetzals for the care of babies, girls and boys who will be given up for adoption25.
In addition to private houses where one to three children can be found, there are houses that operate as crèches or can be assumed to be crèches. Two of such houses were identified in Guatemala City; two in Antigua Guatemala, one in Sololá and one in Santiago Sacatepéquez. Most of these crèches are found in the more privileged zones and areas. They have the appropriate infrastructure to care for several babies, they have different types of staff and in most cases they have a legal representative.
The relationship among the places where girls and boys who are in the process of adoption reside is established not only based on the proximity of the homes where they are cared for, but also because these caregivers are often related; they are sisters, spouses, or mother and daughter, for instance. This leads to the assumption that there are groupws of neighbors or friends who are engaged in this business.
98% of the girls and boys who will be given up for adoption are cared for by private persons, most of whom are not licensed to provide this service. These houses are illegally visited by future adoptive parents, since there is no supervision or evaluation by competent State authorities to determine whether they are suitable adoptive parents for the child. One can also assume that these persons have no specific training in caring for children but give them adequate care, since receiving payment and staying in business depends on that.
25 Latin American Institute for Education and Communication (ILPEC), 2000. Adoption and Rights of the Child in Guatemala. UNICEF. Guatemala.
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adoptions in guatemala - protection or business?
This, however, is no guarantee that the children will be safe from hostile environments, where they can suffer ill treatment, abuse and poor care.
Some of the crèches are legally registered, but are not subject to any type of follow-up, evaluation or systematic supervision by the State, to guarantee the health, development and human rights of the girls and boys whose adoptions are being processed.
Needless to say, the addresses recorded in notarial adoption notices sent to the Office of the Solicitor General of the Nation do not constitute sufficient proof that the girls and boys reside at that address, since false addresses have been given in several instances. The Office does not ascertain the place of residence of these girls and boys, which threatens their safety and rights, including their physical safety and even their lives.
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2. Trafficking in girls and boys
In addition to the data on international adoptions, this chapter analyzes statistics on the kidnapping and disappearance of children, as well as information on the purchase and sale of children and surrogate mothers or “wombs for hire”, used to obtain girls and boys that will be given up for adoption.
The Police has received information on the existence of bands of individuals who engage in the theft, kidnapping and disappearance of children. This has given rise to trafficking in children for international adoption, commercial sexual exploitation and child pornography. In certain cases, the reason for the theft of newborns and girls and boys up to 5 or 6 years old is their sale to couples who are unable to conceive. These children are stolen, kidnapped and made to disappear and given up for adoption. When the children are between the ages of 6 and10, they may be used as domestic servants, for forced labor, the sale of merchandise and even child pornography. Adolescents aged 11-17 might be incorporated into the prostitution business and used to produce pornographic material. There is a serious gap in the Guatemalan legislation, which does not criminalize the kidnapping of children. The practice is morally wrong and illicit, but not illegal. Until the Criminal Code is reformed, people accused of the theft and disappearance of children should be accused of kidnapping, since this crime is penalized by the law, under article 201 of the Criminal Code.
26 Vitit Muntarbhorn, First United Nations Special Rapporteur on this mandate. E/CN. 4/1994/84. Paragraph 31.
27 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution andChild Pornography, Mrs. Ofelia Calcetas Santos (E/CN.4/2000/73/Add.2)
As far as the sale of children is concerned, the first United Nations Special Rapporteur who received this mandate defined it as “the transfer of a child from one party (including the birth parents, guardians and institutions) to another, regardless of the purpose, in exchange for financial or other compensation”26. the sale of children was defined as “the transfer of parental authority and/or physical custody of a child to another party on a more or less permanent basis in exchange for physical compensation or other consideration. This definition excludes temporary transactions such as the” rental of children” and clarified the confusion regarding whether this action constitutes sale or trafficking. The sale of a child thus constitutes trafficking27.
For several years, and more frequently in the last few months, there have been reports on the “sale of children” by their own mothers, fathers or birth families. This practice has been linked to international adoptions. The transaction is actually a purchase and sale of a child. On the one hand there is the person who sells the child, and on the other the person who consents or promotes its sale. It is also known that the sale of children is often associated with deceit and coercion on the part of the buyers. These take advantage of the mothers’ status and material needs, their low educational level and their lack of knowledge of Spanish and their ignorance of their rights or their vulnerability when away from their places of origin. The purchase and sale of children are also linked with the theft, kidnapping and with women who engage in the business of having children for sale.
There are also surrogate mothers, or “wombs for hire”, women who get pregnant on purpose and then sell their children to persons or crèches or through hospitals that are involved in the adoption business. Unlike what happens in other countries, these women do not appear in catalogues where each womb for hire can be worth $80,000, or where the future parents contact the woman who will rent them their womb and become pregnant through in vitro fertilization. Women have babies clandestinely and then sell them to the highest bidder. This study was unable to document specific cases.
2.1. Theft and disappearance of girls and boys
2.1.1 The Victims
Two types of victims can be identified: girls and boys who are stolen and mothers.whose children are stolen and missing. The victims also include the fathers and birth families, although according to the cases studied, most of the time it is the women who are the direct victims of the theft of a child.
Stolen and Missing Children aged 0 months to 10 yearsTotal number of cases 77
Stated in absolute values / GRAPH 8
60 / 59
Stolen
Missing
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
0 months - / 10 / years / 0 months - 5 years / 6 - 10 / years
Source: Files of the Office of the Solicitor General of the Nation, Guatemala, 2007
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Sstolen and missing girls and boysJanuary-December 2006 and January-July 2007
Stated in absolute values / GRAPH 9
160
142
140
120
100
77
80
60
40
20
0 / January-December 2006 / January-June 2007
Source: Files of the Office of the Solicitor General of the Nation, Guatemala, 2007.
Stolen and missing girls and boys
Stated in absolute values
GRAPH 10
120 / 117 / Stolen100 / Missing
80
60 / 59
40
25 / 18
20
0 / January-December 2006 / January-June
2007
Source: National Civil Police statistics,, 2007.