If you haven’t heard yet, two infants from Casa Quivira were released to their adoptive parents after it was determined that their adoption was legal.

However, it has been reported (which doesn’t mean that it is true) that the remaining children are not receiving the right food and medical attention from the officials in charge. Guatemalan officials have denied this. I doubt that we’ll ever really know what is going on there.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that the unscrupulous scum that deal in adoption corruption keep the children in such exemplary homes like Casa Quivira, but I may be very wrong.

In my opinion, this whole mess with the Casa Quivira adoption home is just another sad example of how the politics of adoption isn’t really about the welfare of the children. It is about flexing muscles, finger pointing and control.

Many people in Guatemala, particularly among the indigenous population, believe that children are stolen from their parents and sold to the U.S. for their body parts. This rumor started when the CIA was heavily involved in the Civil War that raged in Guatemala between 1960 and 1996.

On one of the web lists that I read, adoptive parents who have taken their children back to Guatemala to visit have been told that Guatemalans are relieved to see these adopted children alive and well. Seeing them helps squelch the rumors about body parts.

With the elections taking place in the fall in Guatemala, it is highly unlikely that the country will be Hague compliant by the first of the year. This may mean hold ups for parents in process unless the U.S. is also not compliant yet.

It would be very traumatic for parents and children caught up for months in the politics of the Hague Convention. The implementation of the second DNA sample may reduce the number of children taken illegally from their parents. However, it won’t necessarily help mothers who are coerced into putting their children up for adoption.

Raiding adoption homes gets lots of local and international press, and appeases the people who strongly criticize the adoption process. But if the welfare of the children was really in the minds of the people giving the orders, paper checking could be done quietly and non-aggressively on a regular basis. If the welfare of the children really was the issue…….

Under pressure to clean up adoptions, Guatemala cracks down

The Challenge of International Adoptions

The Latin American Baby Snatching Myth