With presidential elections just a few days away, the children of Casa Quivira are not exactly making the front page or any page of the newspapers. On September 3rd, this statement was posted by Clifford Phillips, director of Casa Quivira.

More than three weeks after the raid on Casa Quivira Children’s Home not a single petition to the court from CQ attorneys relating to the accusations of illegally housing children and placing them into adoption has received a response. The whereabouts and well being of all forty-two (42) children who were ordered transferred from CQ continues to be unknown. The private property of Casa Quivira continues to be under state intervention and petitions to return control to the organization are ignored. The Ministerio Publico, MP, (District Attorney’s Office) refuses to allow CQ attorneys access to the case against the organization, violating article 14 of the Guatemalan Constitution.

If you take the time to read the whole post, you’ll quickly figure out that the attorneys are in a “Catch 22” situation. Perhaps with stubbornness and perseverance (and intervention from “higher up”) these children will be returned to Casa Quivira and their adoptions completed.

Now here is an interesting development regarding the processing of adoptions in Guatemala. Apparently it is possible to process adoptions judicially in Guatemala, and it has recently been done. Wow, I learn something new everyday. If PGN doesn’t approve an adoption, the lawyer or notary can pass the case on to Family Court and the judge there can decide to approve the adoption or not.

Why hasn’t this been used before? Well, the judges in Family Court don’t want to contradict PGN. But according to Susana Luarca, PGN has been so abusive lately that the judges are willing to stick their necks out. PGN is very angry about this and is trying, albeit unsuccessfully so far, to nullify these adoptions. The judge who approved some adoptions recently is taking a lot of flak. I take my hat off to her.

One of the main criticisms of Guatemalan adoptions has been that they do not go through any judicial process. All this time it theoretically has been possible to utilize the services of a judge by rejecting PGN’s ruling; that is if a judge is willing to take the wrath from the officials of PGN.

And back briefly to the elections, apparently not even a hurricane will postpone the elections unless there is a lot of serious damage. On Sunday, six million Guatemalans will be making their way to the polls. At this point, it appears that it will be a very close finish between right-wing Otto Perez Molina and center-left front-runner Alvaro Colom.

On a cheerful note, it turns out that you can support the Guatemalan economy simply by stopping in at your nearest Starbucks and having a cup of java. Guatemala is the number one provider of coffee to Starbucks.

After textiles, coffee is the second largest export product of Guatemala. The US is the number one destination for their coffee. Last year Guatemala exported 3.35 million 60-kilo bags, worth a total of $463.5 million dollars. That is a lot of coffee and writing about it has me thirsting for a mug.