Guatemalan soldiers sold children in war

Guatemalan soldiers sold children in war - gov't

Thu Sep 10, 2009 8:28pm EDT

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.

Right To Reproduce?

Update on an earlier post today (and switching gears from one insanity to another)...

Over on the Embryo Adoption discussion...these folk are claiming that reproduction is a constitutionally protected right? Lawyers please? Constitutional scholars? They are somehow using abortion to prove their point when I went to research this odd (to me) claim.

What I found is this:

The right to privacy and personal bodily autonomy have been found to exist within the constitution as well as above and beyond the constitution itself.

Quote:
“personal right: a right that forms part of a person’s legal status or personal condition, as opposed to the person’s estate.”

Where does it say anything about the *right* to REPRODUCE? And why should any of in fighting to reform, reconstruct, redefine or or eliminate adoption even care?

Well, I for one likely won't be around to see it, but this is the future. Reproductive technology WILL replace adoption, since it is much preferred by the majority of those adopting. Gamete or (left over) fertilized embryo adoption still offers the woman the pregnancy experience she misses through traditional adoption.

One might think: Good: it replaces adoption. Stops tearing families apart to create new ones. Yes. But, hooray: it stops the pressure and coercion and the exploitation? Not exactly! There's dimply be a switch to exploiting the poor for their sperm and eggs and wombs.

AND...the bonus of embryo adoption (and other forms of assisted third party reproduction for the paying customers is never having to tell anyone, not even the kid, how - or by whom - he was conceived. He can grow up and wonder why he has an eye color that is impossible genetically based on his "parents". She can worry about getting breast cancer like her "mother" and even consider prophylactic mastectomy...but they don't have to ever be told the truth!

As Pertman points out, it it duplicates all of the problems of adoption and horrifyingly - starts them all over again back to the 1960's when standard practice was NOT to tell your child he or she was adopted. No one ever had to know!

Pertman HOPES that they learn form our lessons that secrecy is bad. But we've been HOPING for 40 years for equal access!

So there you have it. The brave new world. Back to square one for these kids in the fight to be treated like human beings with rights.

An speaking of rights, I segue back to the question of a constitutional right to reproduce. Is there such a thing?

Third Party Reproduction and Adoption

Third party reproduction involves the use of sperm, egg or womb of a "third party" to the person or couple attempting to become parents of a child and creates a child who may not be related to one or both parents.

Dawn Davenport, director of Creating a Family, who hosts a webcast radio program on "infertility and adoption" describes adoption as "moving up the treatment ladder" of infertility treatment. Really? Is that how WE think of adoption? Is that the intent of adoption? Is it really all about infertility?

The hottest topic today within this "third party" realm is embryo or gamete adoption.

Karen Roeb, Clinical Administrator of Fertility Miracles, a division of the American Fertility Institute, is quoted on MomLogic.com 9/8/09 as saying that "snowflake" embryo adoption is "a little easier than adopting a child. Psychologically it's almost the same. You still get to experience the birth. When a donor donates, she gives up all legal rights to any children that are produced -- even the egg. She's not entitled to the child or the embryo."

Just two days prior, on Sept 6, a blog post entitled, "Is Embryo Adoption Adoption?" references a Social Science Research Network article entitled, "Embryo Exchanges and Adoption Tax Credits."

I encourage you to listen to Dawn's webcast interview with Adam Pertman, shortly after EBDAI published the study titled “Old Lessons for a New World: Applying Adoption Research” and Experience to Assisted Reproductive Technology” and Marna Gatlin, founder and Director of the nonprofit, Parents Via Egg Donation.

All three parties involved in the webcast agreed that children must be told how they were created - yet sadly they say that most "recipient" parents do not want to or will not tell their child. However, all of these sources missed totally in comparing these methods of OBTAINING a child, the sealing of a child's original and true birth certificate.

None of these sources mention what I see as the difference between the two:

“Gamete adoptees” ARE in fact born to their “adopter” – so that complicates everything in terms of calling them adopted. The “gamete adoptee” - and correct me please if I am wrong - does not have original identity that gets erases when they are adopted.

To make laws requiring people to inform their adopted embryo kids the truth is impossible to enforce, just like it is impossible to enforce telling any child if sperm or egg were purchased and thus he is not biologically connected to one or both of the parents who raised him. No more than you can force anyone who cheats on their spouse and gets pregnant to reveal the truth of their father.

In regular adoption the situation is quite different. Laws can and should be changed to allow equal access to the true record of one's birth which exist.

The child of DI or embryo adoption - a “gamete adoptee” - has no original birth certificate to access and thus could only find the truth if his parents choose to tell him or through medical records of their mother, which are protected by HIPAA law.

A New Networking Website

If you haven't yet heard...I thought this looks good and was worth passing on:

AdoptionResourceCenter.org

AdoptionResourceCenter.org (ARC) is a brand new, non-commercial, non-profit, independent networking clearinghouse of resources with no religious or political affiliations or agenda for those concerned about or touched by adoption.

ARC exists to provide educational links to organizations, books, articles, videos, conferences, call for papers, blogs, videos, Facebook groups, forums, email lists… of interest to all who are interested in, work with, or are touched by adoption. It is NOT a how-to adopt resource.

ARC: the NOT DOT COM!

ARC accepts no advertising, donations, links or listings from individuals or business that place children for adoption or which support such businesses. Avoidance of such advertisers, donors or listing helps provide the most honest, impartial information free of any commercial influence. The only acceptable ads will be from approved and listed organizations, books, vidoes and films, etc.

Sites and links will be peer reviewed as to appropriateness and fitness with the goal of the site. Contact us to be on the board of peer reviewers. Please CONTACT ARC to be on the reviewing board.

WHO WILL BENEFIT?

All non-profit adoption reformers who want to drive traffic to their websites, blogs. articles; inform about conferences, etc.

Pooling efforts in this way will increase visibility for all and help people find these resources more easily than each of us being out in cyberspace on our own.

Currently, the word "adoption" yields far too many commercial sites and the word “birthmother” (even birthmother support) yields businesses marketing to meet a demand, touting adoption and offering incentives.


Take a FREE Test Tour

Your Site Belongs Here!

Use the Contact link to submit your site.

TO DO LIST:

1. Tour the site

2. Use the CONTACT LINK to SUBMIT edit or delete resources; share comments, suggestions

3. Volunteer to be on the review board!

4. Book, movie list volunteer?

5. Pass this message to every adoption-related lists, forum etc.


Combat The DOT COM Baby Brokers

Be the change you want to see!

Question for Those Touched by Adoption

“A most striking finding in the present study is that the majority of these women reported no diminution of their sadness, anger and guilt over the considerable number of years which had elapsed since their relinquishment…
“A significant number actually reported an intensification of these feelings, especially anger...
“a very high incidence of pathological grief reactions which have failed to resolve although many years have elapsed since the relinquishment.”

Dr. John Condon, "Psychological Disability in Women Who Relinquish a Baby for Adoption," Medical Jr. of Australia, Vo. 144, Feb 3, 1986.


Do you agree? Does this ring true for you? Do you feel more at peace with time, or more angry as the reality of the enormity of the exploitation of single, poor mothers worldwide becomes ever more apparent?

For me, the cycle seems to have gone like this:

I was brainwashed and believed I was doing the "right thing" in letting my daughter be adopted in 1968. For a few years i tried to continue to beleivehat even as I heard people saying cruel things about a major news story of the contested adoption of Helen Scarpetta: "any dog can give birth" "the nerve of her!"

Within 5-6 years after relinquishing, I learned that adoptees were searching for their mothers and I was mesmerized!

There was relief in finding other mothers and knowing I was not the "only one and not a "bad person" who had done a "bad thing."

Then, I began to feel angry and duped as I met mothers whose kids had not received anything near "the better life" we had been promised. That realization and disappointment led to my first book.

Solinger's Wake up Little Susie, released in 1992, was a wake up call. I really "got" the socio-economic-political backdrop within which the pressures of my family had occurred. It was more evident than ever that parenthood is a wonderful thing for married, mature couples, but looked down upon for those who did not fit the stereotype nd that out families were concerned with their image.

I suffered a major personal setback in 1995 when my daughter daughter died. Once again my loss was marginalized; not allowed "normal" morning. Thank goodness for my other (birth) mother friends!

It took ten years for me to be able to do much of anything - or even think about anything - to do with adoption again. I seethed quietly about the way her adoption had been handled from the beginning and her adoptive parents that all combined with genetics to cause her to take her life. It again resurfaced issues raised in The Dark Side: lack of follow-up and statistics on adoption.

As I worked on continued my personal empowerment and began work on my second book...and through to day, the social circle of blame widened. It ws clealry not me; not even just my family. It was society...and yet, not American society. It had mushroomed into a global issue of exploitation and communication.

Once that door is open and that little devil comes out - there is not going back for me! Being a "nice" girl - trying to be a "good girl" is what los me my child. I have absolutely no desire of going back to that state.

My righteous indignation ignites, invigorates, focuses and motivates me and I totally embrace it. It is very directed and gaol oriented - not vengeful. I have no desire to attempt to sooth it, even if I could. The more I know, the angrier I am. So, yes, for the Condon quote fits.

How about you?

“It is wise to direct your anger towards problems -- not people; to focus your energies on answers -- not excuses.” William Arthur Ward

“Anger is only a natural reaction; one of the mind's ways of reacting to things that it percieves to be wrong. While anger can sometimes lead people to do shocking things,it can also be an instinct to show people that something isn't right.”

“Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.” William Shenstone

Human Trafficking in International Adoption

"Adoption is already steeped in the legacy of loss for the child and his family. Add to this the recent revelations of the selling of babies for adoption in countries like Vietnam and India, and one needs only to reconsider who exactly is benefiting from adoption.," says Kevin Minh Allen in his recent Conducive article, The Price We All Pay: Human Trafficking in International Adoption which explores move to change the definition of the word "orphan" to increase intercountry adoption.

"The underlying assumption is that the exportation of a child, regardless of context or circumstances, to a more affluent environment is a 'humanitarian act'. "

"The kidnapping and abduction, coercion and intimidation, and buying and selling of children for adoption are an abomination not just to American values, but also to anyone who takes human rights seriously. Regardless of best intentions and relative (relative being the optimal word here) affluence that many adopted children have experienced, the exposure and punishment of people who engage in fraud and profiteering under the pretense of adoption should be vigorously pursued."

"Jane Jeong Trenka’s essay mentioned the crux of the problem here: In spite of adoption agencies’ contention that they wish they could heal the broken ties between mother and child, there is way too much money to be made off of those broken ties, and adoption agencies have no intention of getting out of the business of finding children for expectant parents."


"The nasty little secret about adoption is that most of the time it is steeped in unnecessary loss for the child and its family."

"...international adoption ... has become a lucrative market for unscrupulous people to exploit a vulnerable population in order to export children overseas to ostensibly satisfy a relatively well-off client class. This demand for healthy infants feeds the cycle of corruption that attempts to cater to its desire for children to build its family. An untold number of children have been either displaced or separated from their birth families, either through coercion, financial motivation or abduction and are now living in adoptive families who remain blissfully unaware or, worse, do not even care."

Adoption Comparisons

Adoption has been compared to marriage in that it unites family unrelated people. It is a comparison I have always cringed at because marriage involves CONSENTING adults! Big difference.

"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage." Sheila Cronan

"The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands..." Declaration of Feminism.

"...feminists invoked contract as a model for equality in marriage, counterposing it to bondage." From bondage to contract: wage labor, marriage, and the market in the age of... By Amy Dru Stanley

Many of us likely do not agree. Perhaps most of us. But some people do and prefer to cohabit.

Comparative arguments like these - whether you agree or disagree - create lively and thoughtful discussion and debate.

In my first book, The Dark Side (1988) I compared birthmother to Vietnam Vets. That did not in any way imply that birthmothers were subjected to or at risk of anything near the physical assaults of one in war. It simply compared the issue of being deceived into thinking that you were doing good and many later realizing they were duped and feeling anger and depression and PTSD.

No one objected to that comparison even though it is pretty far-fetched!

Many of us have debated whether adoption is abandonment or not. For many adoptees it feels that way, and some mothers may have felt that they were abandoning their babies. Others - myself included - did not. I was completely brainwashed to believe that what I was doing was best, not wrong. I fully recognize adoptees to express their abandonment feelings, though it is not my reality. I respect that it is theirs and no e can tell another how or what to feel.

So, why then if some adoptees, or mothers, identify with the story of Jaycee's adoption - in any way whatsoever - would we not openly discuss in what ways adoption is like kidnapping?

Interestingly, one mother I quoted in The Dark Side in 1988 compared adoption to a life sentence in prison and to MURDER...infanticide to be exact, saying:

". . . It is a life sentence with no parole. Birth-mothers are consigned to a special level of hell, where we burn forever in a frozen flame that tortures, but does not consume, and gives no light. . . (Adoption) is an institutionalized form of symbolic infanticide, with all the horror, revulsion and guilt intact. . . We feel like murderers because we ARE murderers—but we killed with a pen, not a gun . . . Adoption does not kill the body, but it surely kills a large part of the soul, both of the mother and of the child." Mary Anne Cohen, The Dark Side of Adoption , p 71

That seems a bit more dramatic and harsh than allowing adoptees or mothers to think about in what ways adoption resembles being kidnapped....which I STILL claim is merely a legal difference.

Other mothers have compared the loss of their child to an amputation or to themselves being aborted. Those are their comparisons; the analogies and symbolism they see and feel when they try to find to express their pain and loss.

Some of us put this symbolism into poems or artwork or film or dance. Others just simply state that that is how they feel. Each of us has that right to free expression and disagreements - when done respectfully - are part of how we learn and grow.

It is unfair and unkind, however, to simply shut someone -- or a discussion -- down by stating that their comparison is WRONG, or inaccurate, or a stretch. It may be that for you, but it may be totally different for another.

For the happily married person, comparing marriage to slavery is preposterous. And yet that be another's reality of their life's experience.