On any given day in Antigua, a touristy colonial town in Guatemala, as many as a dozen American couples can be seen lounging with their soon-to-be-adopted Mayan children in the Parque Central or dining nearby in posh restaurants.
The couples enjoy the leisurely Latin American lifestyle?–?constant spring-like temperatures, drooping bougainvillea plumage and stunning views of Volcán de Agua to the south. But lately, fear has set in among the Guatemalan adoption industry. The Guatemalan government is threatening to wrestle control of adoption away from the private sector and either slow it to a crawl or shut it down completely.
Last year, at fancy Antigua hotels or in the lobby of the Marriott in Guatemala City’s upscale Zona 9, Guatemalan foster mothers or adoption attorneys passed many of the 4,135 babies adopted from this country into the eager arms of teary-eyed couples from El Norte. In other words, one percent of all babies born in Guatemala in 2006 ended up in American cribs.
Guatemala is the only Latin American country that doesn’t exercise stringent state control over international adoptions. Adoptions there fall under the notary system, which means they are essentially privatized and run by attorneys who, critics claim, traffic in impoverished, malnourished and sometimes stolen babies.
Adoptive parents can spend approximately $25,000 to $30,000 to adopt from Guatemala, and most of them leave days or weeks later with their little ones cradled in their arms, and with no questions asked as to how the attorneys acquired their babies.
