[Jensboys]

Mostly applicable for those who have adopted children born in the late 80's early 90's but this will be in the news, and parents need to be informed to address it with their kids, and those who will ask about it.


Guatemalan soldiers sold children in war - gov't | Reuters

Guatemalan soldiers sold children in war - gov't
Thu Sep 10, 2009 8:28pm EDT \Featured Broker sponsored link
By Sarah Grainger

GUATEMALA CITY, Sept 10 (Reuters) - At least 333 children and probably thousands more were taken by Guatemalan security forces and sold abroad during the country's 36-year civil war, a government report said on Thursday.

Soldiers and police killed children's parents, lied about how they had been found and handed them to state-run homes for sale to adoptive parents in the United States and Europe, said the report, which was based on government archives.
The archives in the Guatemalan presidency's social welfare department show hundreds of children whose parents were killed by the army or who were forcefully taken from their families and were put up for adoption with false papers.

"Some of the people involved in organizing these adoptions made the process into a very lucrative business for themselves, and with that in mind they gave priority to international adoptions," Marco Tulio Alvarez, the report's author and the director of the archives, told a news conference.

By the end of the war in 1996, Guatemala was the second largest source of children adopted internationally after China, but numbers have dropped after the government tightened regulations in 2007.

Investigators studied 333 cases for this preliminary report into adoptions during some of the most violent years of the war, between 1977 and 1989, after the archive was opened by President Alvaro Colom last year.

Around 250,000 people, mostly indigenous Mayan Indians, died in the war between successive right-wing governments and leftist insurgents, which ended with the signing of UN-backed peace accords in 1996.

Human rights groups hope that dozens of people could be prosecuted based on the new report. There may be thousands more cases but little paperwork survives as proof.

Bernabe Gutierrez was 3 years old when his mother was killed by soldiers and his father fled to Mexico in 1980.

He and his three siblings were taken by a local pastor and then split up. Gutierrez and his sister remained in Guatemala and a brother was adopted in Italy. Gutierrez' youngest brother has never been found.

"(I'm) very sad, devastated, because it's unacceptable that armed men can come into a home and take the lives of defenseless people like they did," said Gutierrez, who has been reunited with some members of his family.

Experts are also working on digitalizing and making public a massive police archive of millions of documents that were discovered, covered in dust and bat droppings, in a warehouse on the outskirts of Guatemala City four years ago.

The huge paper trail contains everything from parking tickets to arrest warrants and could help prosecute former police officers who killed activists and union leaders during the civil war.

[JosieWales]

Oh my. Oh, my.

[MamaS]

The same thing was happening in El Salvador and in Columbia in the 70's and 80's. It was well-known that the government soldiers demoralized rebel villages by taking the children to the capital, declaring them abandoned orphans, and adopting them out to Americans and Europeans. This served three purposes:
1. Made villagers think twice about supporting or sheltering rebel soldiers.
2. Provided international cash and credits for the government in power.
3. Gave international support to the government from grateful parents who organized planeloads of supplies, medicines, etc. to be sent to their adopted child's country of origin.

[celticsunshine06]

This makes me sick! How horrible, disgusting and tragic.

[RuthC]

I think this might be "old" news. I recall reading some years ago about a young woman in the US who was one of the victims (my word not anyone elses) of these adoptions and she discovered the history and was able to find some of her family. Wish I could remember her location and more info. I recall she was adopted as a older child (7-0 years old maybe) and began having nightmares and distinct memories that she was able to trace back to these events.

Still very sad

[JoshGuat]

Horrible! That makes me sick! Shame on them!

[RavenSong]

I witnessed the same exact thing happen in El Salvador during the early 1980's, when I was part of a medical-relief team that went down there shortly after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the murders of Jean Donavan and the three American nuns.

The villages I worked in all had missing children who had been stolen by the government, after first killing their parents, who were suspected of being rebels. Those children, from what I heard, mostly ended up being adopted by Americans.

[mommytoEli]

CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

Guatemalan army stole children for adoption, report says - CNN.com

imagine my surprise to find it on the front page of cnn this morning! what an awful time that country is having with adoptions. so many poor choices made by too many people with power.

[RuthC]

I posted earlier that this was "old" news but I thought I'd share something that happened this morning after this hit CNN. I was standing on the sidelines at one of my girls' soccer games this afternoon and while my older daughter was playing and my youngest two were bouncing on the sidelines (all three are from Guatemala), I was asked if I thought they might be stolen. UGH!!!!! I encouraged them to read the article closely and understand the timeline the article outlined. Fortunately my girls were out of ear shot but I know the conversation about this will have to happen eventually.

[mommytoEli]

Originally Posted by RuthC

I posted earlier that this was "old" news but I thought I'd share something that happened this morning after this hit CNN. I was standing on the sidelines at one of my girls' soccer games this afternoon and while my older daughter was playing and my youngest two were bouncing on the sidelines (all three are from Guatemala), I was asked if I thought they might be stolen. UGH!!!!! I encouraged them to read the article closely and understand the timeline the article outlined. Fortunately my girls were out of ear shot but I know the conversation about this will have to happen eventually.

when i posted earlier, i was going to say i bet 100 bucks that someone here has someone who didn't read the entire article ask if their child was stolen. and there you go. i am so sorry....and i am glad the girls didn't overhear.


permission to be selfish for a moment:
you know, i am so sad for all the awful things going on there now, and for the things that are just being uncovered now, but selfishly i hurt for the children who are here and adopted who will have the validity of their adoption, really their life, questioned continuously because of these heinous acts. there are true victims of this awful story, but then there are also a ton of passive victims here- not sure about the vocabulary, but really, these things impact our children, too. (obviously not in the same way.) but i don't want eli going through life with people asking or teasing him about being stolen, when in reality, eli was most likely "just" adopted. i realize today, that as a parent of a child of guatemala, i have so much MORE responsibility to educate my son than just teaching him about his country and adoption, but sadly, i am going to have to teach him, earlier than i would have liked, about the corruption, kidnappings, crimes, etc. i have taught my other adopted children witty comebacks and clever sayings to combat nosy questions and mean comments about being adopted....and i find myself tonight trying to come up with some for eli....to combat the comments and questions he may get about being stolen. *sigh*

[2xaround]

Didn't something similar happen around the time of the Korean War? I seem to remember watching a movie during our adoption training about the number of Korean children that were declared war orphans. Many came to the U.S. to be adopted by Americans. There were a lot of questions surrounding the legitimacy of their orphan status.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a tragedy of war.