Guatemalan army stole children for adoption, report says

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CNN

Guatemalan army stole children for adoption, report says
updated 9:16 a.m. EDT, Sat September 12, 2009

(CNN) -- The Guatemalan army stole at least 333 children and sold them for adoption in other countries during the Central American nation's 36-year civil war, a government report has concluded. Many of those children ended up in the United States, as well as Sweden, Italy and France, said the report's author and lead investigator, Marco Tulio Alvarez.

In some cases, the report said, parents were killed so the children could be taken and given to government-operated agencies to be adopted abroad. In other instances, the children were abducted without physical harm to the parents.

"This was a great abuse by the state," Alvarez told CNN on Friday.

Investigators started examining records in May 2008 for a period that spanned from 1977-89, said Alvarez, the director of the Guatemalan Peace Archive, a commission established by President Alvaro Colom. Of 672 records investigators looked at, Alvarez said, they determined that 333 children had been stolen. The children were taken for financial and political reasons, he said.

Alvarez acknowledges that many more children possibly were taken. Investigators zeroed in on the 1977-89 period because peak adoptions occurred during that time frame, particularly in 1986. They will investigate through 1995 and hope to have another report ready by early next year, he said.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/09/12/guatemala.child.abduction/index.html

[Solly Mack]

1. Horror story

:(

[Wizard777]

2. Do they know a girl going by the name of "Kenya?"

[Wilms]

3. Reagan administration's links to Guatemala's terrorist government

Reagan administration's links to Guatemala's terrorist government

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/160.html

[dipsydoodle]

5. Goes back before that

to the Dulles brothers protecting their interests in United Fruit in the 1950's.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Guatemala_KH.html

[Wilms]

6. Why does the US (continue to) hate democracy and freedom?

In 1955, the New York Times reported from the United Nations that "The United States has begun a drive to scuttle a section of the proposed Covenant of Human Rights which poses a threat to its business interests abroad." The offending section dealt with the right of peoples to self-determination and to permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources. Said the newspaper: "It declares in effect that any country has the right to nationalize its resources ..."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Guatemala_KH.html

[dipsydoodle]

4. That's awful

x(

[defendandprotect]

7. k i c k

[annm4peace]

8. School of the Americas. our US tax dollar funded Military School

Probably trained the Guatemalan Army

[Alhena]

9. Didn't Chief Justice Roberts adopt a blond-headed boy from Central America?

Not saying something comparable happened there, but it did seem unusual to me.

[a la izquierda]

10. Large German population in Guatemala

as a result of the coffee booms, beginning in the 1870s. It's entirely possible that if he did adopt a blond child from Central America, it's ancestors came from Germany.

[MountainLaurel]

14. His children are Irish

If memory serves correctly, that was part of the controversy, since Ireland bans international adoptions.

[a la izquierda]

11. Not shocked in the slightest.

I bet 99% of these children were born of indigenous parents.

Fucking sick. Sorry for the cussing, but it's just sick.
One more messed up thing I get to teach my students about Guatemala in a few weeks.

[troubledamerican]

12. Argentina, 1976: Children of the Disappeared

http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/Argentina-Children-of-the,3756

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Buenos Aires supported the military coup, the disappearing of citizens, and the "adoption process" of children stolen by military families. The archdiocese of Buenos Aires admitted then later denied having lists of the stolen children. To this day, they stonewall against investigations searching for such lists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Carlos_Aramburu

[LeftyMom]

13. I suspect there's a lot more of this going on in overseas adoptions than people like to think about.

One more resource to be sold to wealthy foreigners. :shrug:

[marshall]

15. Guatemala was also a resource for gay Americans seeking to adopt

http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_2735.php

Technically it is a single adoption, and the adopting parent has to have a psychologist draw up a paper that says "to the best of my knowledge this person is not homosexual", signed with a wink and a nod.

[Janie Jones]

16. The Lord's Work

In 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children
went to Guatemala to investigate numerous complaints that
babies were being kidnapped from all over Latin America, even
cut from the womb, and sold for adoption through their corrupt
system. The UN concluded that "the majority of adoptions
from Guatemala are illegal." At the time, tiny Guatemala
was listed as the third most common source country for foreign
adoptions in Canada and the Association of Adoptive Families
dismissed the UN report as "rumours."  

The international adoption industry has nothing to do with
helping suffering children, they carry too much baggage for
the would-be adopters, they want a clean slate. They want
babies, the younger the better and are willing to pay top
dollar. John Sayles made a movie a few years back called Casa
de los Babies set in a fictionalized version of Guatemala. It
focuses entirely on the needy neurotic baby buyers and
portrayed the baby source as a fantasy 50s throwback society
where aspiring middle class parents don't want their teenage
daughter's life ruined by early marriage or the shame of unwed
motherhood.

International baby selling is a multi billion dollar business
and even high profile adopters like Angelina and Madonna have
racked up violations in all of their adoptions. The brokers
for Maddox, Jolie's eldest were actually convicted in a
Seattle court and sentenced to three years in jail for paying
as little as $100 for babies they re-sold for tens of
thousands. Some of the benefits they enjoyed for doing
"the Lord's work" were a beachfront mansion in
Honolulu with a Jaguar in the driveway and a fully staffed
luxury apartment in Phnom Penh that included a bullet proof
limo and bodyguards.

Speaking of the Lord's Work:
More Fruit in Central America
http://watch.pair.com/antipas.html

[Janie Jones]

17. The Lord's Work

In 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children
went to Guatemala to investigate numerous complaints that
babies were being kidnapped from all over Latin America, even
cut from the womb, and sold for adoption through their corrupt
system. The UN concluded that "the majority of adoptions
from Guatemala are illegal." At the time, tiny Guatemala
was listed as the third most common source country for foreign
adoptions in Canada and the Association of Adoptive Families
dismissed the UN report as "rumours."  

The international adoption industry has nothing to do with
helping suffering children, they carry too much baggage for
the would-be adopters, they want a clean slate. They want
babies, the younger the better and are willing to pay top
dollar. John Sayles made a movie a few years back called Casa
de los Babies set in a fictionalized version of Guatemala. It
focuses entirely on the needy neurotic baby buyers and
portrayed the baby source as a fantasy 50s throwback society
where aspiring middle class parents don't want their teenage
daughter's life ruined by early marriage or the shame of unwed
motherhood.

International baby selling is a multi billion dollar business
and even high profile adopters like Angelina and Madonna have
racked up violations in all of their adoptions. The brokers
for Maddox, Jolie's eldest were actually convicted in a
Seattle court and sentenced to three years in jail for paying
as little as $100 for babies they re-sold for tens of
thousands. Some of the benefits they enjoyed for doing
"the Lord's work" were a beachfront mansion in
Honolulu with a Jaguar in the driveway and a fully staffed
luxury apartment in Phnom Penh that included a bullet proof
limo and bodyguards.

Speaking of the Lord's Work:
More Fruit in Central America
http://watch.pair.com/antipas.html

[arikara]

18. Hmmm... makes you wonder

if this current crop of insane religious freaks wasn't engineered by the same lot.

Welcome to DU Janie!

[Janie Jones]

19. Thank you!