GUATEMALAN ADOPTIONS

GUATEMALAN ADOPTIONS
By Jean Nelson Erichsen, MA, LBSW

Excerpts from:
Inside the Adoption Agency: Understanding Intercountry Adoption in the Era of The Hague Convention and Butterflies in the Wind: The Truth About Latin American Adoptions

The Woodlands, Texas, March, 2009: Lightning and thunder preceded Lisa J. as she burst in our adoption agency, laden with twelve-month-old Anabella, diaper bag, and purse. Lisa’s flushed pink skin and blonde braid looked cool compared to her daughter’s sweaty brow and damp black ponytails. The room was thumping from Anabella’s staccato kicks. “She looks a little feverish. I think she’s thirsty,” I said. “Here, take her, she’s not afraid of strangers,” Lisa said, as she searched for a baby bottle.

I reached out, “Que lindo!” hoping to make the baby feel comfortable with me. She was not impressed. I was just one more stranger in her life. Lisa was excited about her stay at a hotel in Guatemala City, where she met other relieved parents picking up their children. “Some of the children looked fine, but others looked malnourished. My pediatrician says Anabella is developmentally delayed, but she’ll catch up with the help of specialists.” Lisa said. As I listened, I notice spots on Anabella’s arms and legs, the tell-tale pinpoints of scabies.

My mind zoomed back an adoption agency in Bogotá, Colombia, where a smartly dressed lady-in-pink walked in with a maid behind her. Both were carrying gorgeous infants dressed in long white baptismal gowns. She introduced them by lightly touching the babies’ dark hair, “Tatiana,” the baby she held, “y Rosana.” Eyes the color of mocha velvet searched our faces; Tatiana greeted us with a tiny tentative smile. Every cell of my being cried out to love, comfort, and cherish them.

We were told to bring a pediatrician the following day to the agency for a pediatric examination. Though the twins were malnourished, he said affection, individualized attention, and improved diets would rapidly improve their condition. His general assessment was sufficient for the adoption, but problems I’d never dealt with popped up when we left the agency: anemia, dehydration, and lactose intolerance. Tatiana ‘s skin had lost elasticity and hung in loose folds. She was two years old before the skin on her little brown legs looked like skin instead of old wrinkled stockings.

Thunder rattled the windows as Lisa told me about the adopted children at the hotel. I worried about the unraveling Guatemalan adoption process and how it was affecting the standard of care. I remembered that when Colombia signed and ratified The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption in 1993, Guatemala signed but did not ratify. Their adoptions remained unregulated; their foster homes uncontrolled. As Lisa and I waited for the storm to abate, we discussed how fortunate our agency had been in finding a reputable Guatemalan representative. But it looked like the foster mother he employed had lost her energy. Lisa had first visited newborn Anabella when she was referred to her the year before. The average wait for finalization of an adoption then was six months. But during Lisa’s wait, Guatemala was finally forced to deal with their black market adoptions, and the adoption process dragged on. Fortunately, the decree was issued just before we closed our agency.

As the storm petered out, my staff came in to admire our last Guatemalan baby. The days of birth mothers, money, marketing, and madness had petered out, too. Yet four hundred children still wait in Guatemalan foster care while their prospective U.S. prospective parents actively seek help from their legislators to bring them home. We can show our support for them on the Guatemala Waiting Parents Support Group on Facebook. Their website, THE GUATEMALA 900 CAMPAIGN is a series of actions that calls attention to the stagnation of the Guatemalan adoptions begun before 2008.

As for my husband and myself, we’ve come full circle. In 1973, my husband, Heino and I had adopted infant twins in Colombia. In 1982 and 1983, Heino returned to start adoption programs in other Central and South American countries. A slew of both bona fide agencies and crooks followed him. One by one, over the years, most countries revoked their international adoption programs due to internal pressure. There were charges of corruption, kidnapping, and baby selling. Some countries stopped allowing U.S. citizens to adopt. Others swept out their bad officials and reopened with better ones. Most of these countries ratified the Hague Convention of 1993, and some even made provisions that citizens of countries who have not ratified it and set up a central authority cannot adopt from the countries that have. In 1994, Colombia closed, conducted a major investigation, jailed some officials, and then reopened. The difference between these countries is that Colombia’s elite cooperated with their welfare systems to establish, fund, and direct licensed, nonprofit adoption agencies in their major cities. Ecuador followed suit.

As to Anabella, I was overjoyed to see her and her mother at the farewell party of Los Niños International Adoption Center last August. Lisa pointed out that the child is talking, walking, and doing everything a two-year-old does, including saying, “No.” Despite pitfalls in her intercountry adoption, she is a butterfly in the wind, wafted here with as a child of promise.

Jean Nelson Erichsen, MA, LBSW
Certified Social Worker
Former Co-Director of Los Niños International Adoption Center.
Over three decades of freelance writing and adoption experience.
www.erichsenbooks.com