Decree 54-77 of the Guatemalan Congress, which is the Law that regulates the notarial procedure of voluntary matters, such as adoptions, in its articles 4 and 32 states that adoption files must be submitted to the Procuraduria General de la Nacion (PGN) for its review about its legality and to issue an opinion within three days. The PGN may approve the adoption or may object it, but there is no legal provision that allows the PGN to abuse its power by demanding to interview the birthmothers as a condition to approve the adoptions, and to use the lack of such interview as an excuse to derail adoptions where the birth mothers have expressed their consent before notary who presides the adoption process, ratifying it with their signature and if they are illiterate, with their thumbprint and the signature of a witness, and before a Family Court appointed Social Worker, who interviews the birth mothers and the children. As a requirement of the US embassy, that later was adopted by all embassies and by the PGN, a DNA must be performed to prove the kinship between mother and child, and also an HIV test must be done to the birthmother to obtain authorization to apply for the visa of the child. In other words: the birthmothers have to sign off their children, not once but at least four times, and also they have to give their blood and their saliva before the adoption file is submitted to the PGN and there are no legal grounds to demand that the birth mothers also ratify their consent before the PGN.

The period to the arbitrarily mandated birth mother interviews expired, also arbitrarily, on August 31st. Those files without such interviews, are being rejected by the PGN, ordering that the Notary either presents the case to the Courts of the Childhood and Adolescence, or continues the process according to the Adoptions Law. As it has been stated, the Adoptions Law cannot be applied to processes already registered before the CNA.

The Courts of Childhood and Adolescence have jurisdiction over those children whose rights are threatened or are being violated. A child who is being adopted is NOT in either situation, and therefore, the PGN opinion has no legal grounds and the Judges of the Childhood and Adolescence have no jurisdiction over those cases.

It is hard to understand why is that the Guatemalan authorities, instead of helping the children whose adoptions are in its final stage, are set in finding ways to sabotage them. The PGN has always abused its power, but what they are doing now is beyond anything done before. We have seen how the list of requirements that the PGN demands, is changed on a daily basis and that there are no guidelines, because each reviewer has an opinion that also changes from file to file. But now, the PGN not only rejects the adoptions, but in those cases where the birth mother did not obey the illegal order to ratify her consent at the PGN, it has sent its people to snatch the child from their foster mothers. However, there are files that have been approved without the birthmother interview, and there is one file that also was approved, that not only lacks such interview, but has the deposition of the director of the hogar where the children are fostered, stating that they are no longer wanted by the adoptive parents, and therefore, the adoption should not proceed, signed by her and by the PGN and the CNA witnesses, and the PGN notary. This leads us to think that the adoptions of the unwanted children are approved, while the wanted and loved are not.

The CNA has as a self appointed President, Elizabeth Hernandez de Larios, a lawyer whose husband is Carlos Larios, the Chief of Staff of President Colom. Since she has nothing to justify the fifty thousand quetzales monthly salary that she awarded herself, and no intention of working for it, she has issued a communication stating that the CAN will not authorize any adoptions at this time, because the CNA is busy working on establishing guidelines to use in accrediting adoption agencies for intercountry adoptions and to focus on completing transition cases.
The communication of the CNA indicates that there were 883 cases that were not submitted by the August 31, 2008 deadline for the verification process. Those cases will be turned over to the Guatemalan courts as abandonment cases. In order to ensure that those cases get quick attention, CNA felt it was necessary to stop accepting new cases at this time.

The CNA is wrong. The children being adopted should not be turned over to the courts as abandoned cases, because those children have adoptive parents and in most cases, the birthmother signed a power of attorney to allow someone to sign the final deed of adoption on her behalf. And even if she did not leave a power of attorney, she may still sign the deed of adoption. The lack of interview does not disqualify the adoption and does not turn a loved and cared child into a case that merits the intervention of the Childhood courts.
As it has been said, the PGN is acting arbitrarily and so is the CNA. Grandfathered cases should be approved by the PGN without further delay and the CNA people should be doing something else to justify their salaries. The children being adopted are a lame excuse to halt adoptions and the guidelines are long overdue, but in no way justify their inactivity. For the sake of all the children who are not being adopted, we hope that someone has a change of heart and understands that the children cannot wait. Those who need a family need it now, not in January, not later.

The Guatemalan courts have been very reluctant to understand that the PGN is illegally abusing its power. The amparos filed have been denied, partly because the judges are afraid to take the side of those who do adoptions and risk a bad press attack, duly paid and orchestrated by UNICEF, and partly because they are jealous of the fees that the adoption lawyers make, according to the always biased press. However, it is necessary to keep using the legal resources to prevent that those adoptions that meet all the legal requirements, are derailed because they do not meet an illegal one. Since the amparo grants protection only to the person who demands it, every one whose birthmother did not appeared for the so called verification at the PGN should file an amparo to demand the approval of the adoption based on the illegal requirement by the PGN of the birth mother interview. The child you are adopting is not an abandoned child and should not be regarded as such. That child has a family who is waiting to shower him/her with love, kisses and comfort. Even if the adoption is not finalized, the person who is adopting a child has rights and now is the moment to exercise them, fighting for that child whose fate is very somber unless someone steps in to rescue him from the good intentions of the CNA and the PGN, entities that are following to the letter the antiadoption policies of UNICEF.

The National Council for Adoptions placed the first two children under the new adoption law of 2007, that tries to clean up an adoption industry infested with irregularities.

The first two infants placed are Jose, one year and seven months old, and Sandra, seven months old.

“We are giving priority to the domestic adoptions; these are the two first cases”, explained to the AP the coordinator of the multidisciplinary team of the National Council of Adoptions (CAN), Jaime Tecu.

The two minors were ruled abandoned by a judge who later found them a home with a Guatemalan family.

Tecu indicated that the international adoptions will not be rejected. “In fact, within the next days we will place an special needs child with an American couple”, he added.

The authorities did nor disclose the names of the children and of their parents to guarantee their private space.
The CAN has 58 cases of children who can be legally adopted and 89 adoption applications from couples. Only ten applications have been approved by the CNA.

In 2007 there were more than four thousand seven hundred adoptions under a system that allowed irregularities. With the new Adoption Law it is expected transparency in the processes.

Prensa Libre, July 11, 2008.

PP SUMMONS COUNCIL OF ADOPTIONS
By Sandra Valdez

The members of the CNA must go back to Congress on July 21st., bringing with them, already revoked, the act where Elizabeth De Larios was appointed president.

In a summons that the Patriot Party (PP) made to the members of the National Council of Adoptions (CNA) it was clear that such entity has not complied with all the deadlines that the Adoptions Law establishes, and has done actions that the law does not authorize them to do, as it is to create a board of directors.

According to Anabella de Leon, congresswoman of the PP, De Larios appointed herself as president of the CNA, which allows her to collect Q2,500.00 for each of the three weekly meetings, added to monthly Q20,000.00 for representative expenses.

For that reason, the PP congresswoman indicated that they summoned De Larios as well as Concha Barrientos and Rudy Soto, the three members of the CNA, to present to them, on July 21st., already revoked, the act number 2 of last February 8th., where the board of directors was created and De Larios was appointed as president for four years.

If they fail to comply, De Leon warned that she will request that De Larios be interrogated by the whole Congress.

Since both press releases are self explanatory, there is no need to add anything about the transparency and unquestionable honesty of the members of the CNA.

B. UPDATE ABOUT THE AMPAROS

The ruling on the first amparo is due any day now. It was filed by more than 105 notaries on January 30th. 2008, against the National Council of Adoptions, to obtain a ruling stating that the registration form of the CNA was illegal as it supplied unnecessary private information that violated the privacy of the birth mothers, the children and the adoptive families, and requesting the amparo court to state the legal limits of the CNa, that prevent such entity from interfering in any way in the grandfathered cases.

The second amparo was filed by the director of Association Primavera (a private entity that sponsors a temporary home for children in Guatemala City and another in Escuintla), against the PGN for snatching a girl who was already ruled abandoned by the Escuintla judge of Childhood and Adolescence; also for delaying the adoptions of the children at Primavera by requiring the birthmother interviews, which have no legal grounds, and therefore should not be a requirement to approve the adoptions It is in the final stage.

The Third amparo is against the PGN, filed also by the director of Primavera, for delaying the cases of the children at Primavera by requiring the birthmother interviews, because the period to do them, even if it were true that they had the right to do them according to article 57 of the Adoptions Law, it is long expired, as the period to supposedly to do them was thirty days after the law became effective and therefore, to state the obligation of the PGN to release without further delay, all the files of the children at Primavera, who were submitted for the approval of the PGN.

The Fourth Amparo was also filed by the director of Primavera against the PGN for holding up the file - since September last year - of a child at Primavera who needs a cornea transplant and who was ruled abandoned by the Mixco court last year, with the blessings of the PGN. Since its reception by the PGN, the case has been suspended for no reason while the child looses the sight of her right eye.

There are other amparos too, filed by birthmothers whose children were taken at the interviews at the PGN, that are being processed.

According to the statements of Jaime Tecu, over one thousand cases are still missing interviews.

The amparos are necessary because the PGN is not willing to approve the grandfathered adoptions, and are adding requirements that are not in the law and using any excuse, as it is a typo in a name, to order that such adoption must be submitted to a judge, when they very well know that no judge would touch an adoption case, after the vicious attack against the judge Maria del Carmen Berduo, spearheaded by Josefina Arellano, the infamous chief of the section of minors of the PGN who resigned last year.

ADA and some lawyers have filed constitutional challenges against the Adoptions Law that are pending before the Constitutional Court.

We would not be lawyers if we did not trust that the legal system has to restore the order that has been misused by the current authorities, who right now are keeping the children being adopted, from joining their forever families and in some cases, to get the medical attention that they so badly need.

Question: The Guatemalan Solicitor General (Procuradoría General de la Nación or PGN) initiated new adoption procedures, including interviews with the birth mothers. Are those interviews legal?

Answer: No, the Attorney General has no legislative powers and by establishing such interviews as an additional step that according to the PGN has to be fulfilled, under threats of not releasing the adoption file or taking other kind of measures, the Attorney General is braking the law that orders the PGN to issue an opinion within three days.

Question: Since the interviews started taking place, has the PGN approved and released any cases?

Answer: Yes, the PGN has released some approved cases, but not all the cases that were approved by the former authorities have been released and not all the cases that had successful interviews have been released, either. Some cases have been released, where the reviewer demands the presentation of documents already in the file or the fulfillment of requirement without legal grounds. Those requirements are referred as previos, and there is no limit to the number of them.

Question: Why is the National Council on Adoption (CNA) involved in the registration of the transition cases?

Answer: The new adoption law which ended the notarial adoption process and established the legal requisites for Guatemala’s Hague-complaint adoption system specifically protected notarial adoption cases initiated prior to the law’s December 31, 2007 effective date. However, it stated that those cases would only be processed according to notarial procedures if they were registered with the Guatemalan Central Authority for the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption within 30 working days of the law’s effective date. It established that the Consejo Nacional de Adopciones is the Central Authority for Guatemala. As the Central Authority, the CNA is responsible for ensuring that the duties of the Convention are implemented in Guatemala. Since the Notarial adoptions do not have to be Hague Compliant, the notarial adoptions are out of the scope of the CNA, and therefore, their involvement has no legal justification. The former Attorney General, made that very clear and that is why he was removed. The current AG is willing to allow anything that the CNA wants.

Question: What is the U.S. Embassy doing to make sure that the Government of Guatemala doesn’t add new requirements to transition cases (those that were registered with the National Council on Adoption (CNA) before February 12, 2008)?

Answer: The US Embassy is not doing anything. The establishment of the birth mother interviews, the involvement of the CNA in the grandfathered adoptions and the taking by force and without a court order of children being adopted are clear displays of abuse of power that deny the rights of the adoptive parents to have their adoptions completed according to the laws effective until December 30, 2007. The birth mothers have consistently complained about the verbal abuse that they have to endure at the interviews, of the false offers of economical help, a house, medical and education aid that the interviewers offer them if they claim their children back, and how they make them sign blank papers. The US embassy denies all these facts and even though the interviews have no legal grounds, the US embassy refuses to demand that the CAN stays out of those adoptions, and that the PGN respects the grandfather clause and releases the files in a timely manner without asking for illegal and sometimes impossible to fulfill requirements.

Question: Is the new review process, including birth mother interviews, changes that the Guatemalan authorities recently implemented for these cases and that are intended to add an additional level of assurance that the requirements of the old law are actually being met?

Answer: No, the so-called review process that the Colom appointed PGN made mandatory is a clear abuse of power that has a different agenda. The review done by the PGN does not include a birthmother and child interview and much less, the participation of the CNA, and entity that has no legal right to be involved in the approval of cases initiated before the Adoptions Law became effective.

Question: We have heard that during the birth mother interviews, Guatemalan officials are offering money to the birth mothers as an inducement to withdraw their relinquishment and keep their children? Is this true? Who is present during these interviews and is anyone protecting the rights of the birth mothers?

Answer: The birth mothers are grilled by the officials from the PGN and the CNA. Those activities described are not standard practice for these interviews, but happen very often. Even the written acts of the interviews, signed by the people who conducts the interviews, state that the notary was asked to leave, leaving the birthmother alone with them, and the presence of the psychologist is to aid their goal of derailing the adoption. There is nobody to help the birthmother, not even professional translators. When an indigenous birthmother who does not speak Spanish is brought for interrogation, even if she brings a translator, the interviewers do not allow her to use her translator, bringing instead theirs, who is a cleaning lady who works at the PGN and if she does not speak the same language as the birthmother, as there are at least 21 Mayan languages, the child is taken away, as it has happened in at least two cases.

Question: After these new birth mother interviews, have any adoptions been invalidated? What is happening to these children?

Answer: The PGN has not the right to invalidate anything. According to the law, the PGN has to give an opinion that can approve the adoption, or require the fulfillment of additional requirements. If the notary disagrees with the opinion of the PGN, the case may be submitted to the Family Judge, who can disregard the opinion of the PGN and approve the case. A year ago, when the PGN realized that they were loosing control (and bribes) because the judges were approving adoptions, overruling the objections of the PGN, the judges were falsely accused in the press and intimidated by the bad and powerful publicity of Prensa Libre, with the result that now the judges are totally reluctant to approve adoption cases.

Question: When the PGN finds grounds to disapprove an adoption, what is the legal way to approach that situation and how is the PGN handling it now?

Answer: If the PGN finds grounds to disapprove an adoption, it must state so in the opinion that it has to issue within three days. The way they handle it now, it depends if the reason is found during an interview, the PGN interviewers take away the child, ripping him by force of the arms of the birth mother, caregiver or hogar director, then the child is taken to a court of Childhood and Adolescence, where the judge plays along, validating the rescue (as it is called) done by the PGN. Those judges who refuse to do it and give the children back to the hogars or to the caregivers, do not get any of those cases any more and are subject to investigation.

If the grounds to disapprove the adoption are found while reviewing the file, it can be sent to the section of minors of the PGN for investigation, which can take many months and sometimes even years, without notifying the notary, or the adoptive parents. If the investigation does not bring to the light anything wrong, the file is sent back to the reviewer, to find new reasons to object, as to justify the delay in releasing the file.

Question: Does the Procuraduria de la Niñez (Children’s Issues) of PGN, have investigative powers in the adoption processes?

Answer: Yes, but only after a judge has started a process of protection of the rights of a child and only with regard to those processes, not within an adoption process. If the PGN believes that a felony has been committed, they should refuse approval and present a denounce to the District Attorney. To conduct their own investigation is another abuse of power and a takeover of the role of another entity.

Question: Does the PGN have the power to remove a child from the home/foster family where s/he had been staying and place him in a child protection home designated by a Children’s and Adolescents’ Court Judge.
Answer: Nobody has to right to separate a child form his parents or caregivers against their will, only a judge, after he has verified that the child is subjected to mistreatment or neglect. Therefore, to take by force a child because under duress the birth mother said something that in the opinion of the interviewers does not sound right, is an absolute abuse of power ant the fact that a judge validates that, only proves how overpowering the PGN is, not that what they are doing is right.

Question: Is there any way to find out where a child has been taken after a hostile takeover by the PGN?
Answer: Since the people who cared for the child or the birthmother are not being taken into account, the court refuses to disclose to them the place where the child has been taken and even if they do it, to see the child it is necessary to file a written petition to see the child, which can be granted or denied by the judge. And even if the permission to see the child is granted, the new place where the child is, can refuse to allow visitors, because according to their by laws, visitors are allowed only one day each month, and that day was yesterday, for example.

. Question: Is there a special process for handling the following specific kinds of adoption cases:
• Special instances of adoptions that were in process but not registered as on-going cases before the February 12, 2008, deadline?
• Medical emergencies?
• Abandonments?
Answer: Under current Guatemalan law, any adoption case that was not registered before the February 12 deadline will be processed under the provisions stipulated in the new adoption law. But since the CNA and the PGN show absolute no respect for the February 12 deadline, that also ran out for the verifying process (Article 57 of the Adoption Law), and which is the cornerstone of the birthmother interviews, the CNA should register cases of children who were born last year, with the same ample mind that allows them to totally disregard their own deadline.

Medical emergencies are handled privately by the people who care for the children and there is no need to get an authorization from any State entity to do it, since they are not willing to provide any relief, anyway.
The abandonment processes of children started before the Adoption Law, can follow the same grandfather protection if they were registered with the CNA and if they were not, we state that they can still be registered, because deadlines are not being observed by the CNA.

Question: My lawyer is telling me that a child has been identified for me and that Guatemalan authorities are willing to process this case under the new law. Will my child qualify for an immigrant visa?

Answer: Under Guatemala Adoption Laws effective December 31, 2007, lawyers cannot refer children for adoption; all referrals must be made by the Guatemalan National Council for Adoption (CNA). The CNA is the Guatemalan Central Authority for Intercountry Adoptions and six months later is still trying to develop the procedures for referring children for intercountry adoption. After December 31, 2007, and until these new procedures are established and clarified, it would be unwise to accept any offer or make any payments for placement of an adoptive child from Guatemala.

Since the elimination of the notarial process was unconstitutional, a challenge before the Constitutional Court was filed some months ago. Its final ruling is due any day now and it will restore the notarial process, allowing those foreign parents whose government allowed them to adopt abroad (valid !- 600 for the Americans), to adopt a child. As soon as that happens, we will post it here. We hope that the US embassy does not use the visa card on the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, to influence the outcome, as they did with the congressmen to get the Adoptions Law passed. Since the number of parents who filed and kept valid their I-600 is rather small, the number of adoptions would also be limited.

Question: What can I do about the case of the child I am adopting and whose file has been stuck at the PGN for over a month?

Answer: The law says that when the authorities do not issue the opinion that by law they are obligated to give, in over a month, the petitioner can file an amparo to demand that they release the file. If everybody who is in that situation would do it, the PGN would understand that they cannot hold the files for as long as they want. It is an uphill battle, because in Guatemala the relief can be granted at the beginning of the amparo process or the court can wait until they hear arguments from all the interested parties, including the Ministerio Publico. Usually the courts take many months to rule on the amparo. In case they deny it, the appeal is filed at the Constitutional Court.

The amparo should not be confused with the judicial review that the Family Courts may do of the objections by the PGN. A year ago, after a merciless attack by the press to one of the judges who disregarded the previos of the PGN and approved several cases, the rest of the judges do not dare to touch the adoption processes and the Court of Appeals of the Family branch has sided with the PGN, leaving to the the PGN the freedom to object to whatever they want, and leaving the adoptive parents at the mercy of the PGN.

Question: Will I be able to bring home the child I am adopting and whose process seems to find countless obstacles?

Answer: If your place of residence is the United States, request the help of the authorities of your country, because even if the US DOS states that the review process is necessary, it is not and it violates the Guatemala laws, constitutes an abuse of power of the CNA and the PGN and foremost, it is hurting the children, by depriving them of the family they need to grow up as normal human beings. The validation of the PGN review process by the US embassy is wrong and your authorities should be made aware of that.

Question: Are there any news about the amparos filed by the lawyers?

Answer: An amparo filed by the director of a hogar was filed to demand: a) the return of a child who was taken away at the interview at the PGN, because even though the child had been ruled abandoned by a court of Childhood and Adolescence, a woman sponsored by a group called Sobrevivientes (Survivors) whose battle cry is the killing of women, but lately switched to attack adoptions with empty cribs and women lamenting the loss of their children for illegal adoptions, claimed that the child looked like the one she lost, even though she could not tell the same story twice and could not remember the date when she lost her child; b) to rule about the legality of the interviews and c) to order the PGN to release the files of the children t the hogar that has been withholding for over a month. The court, as usual, refused to grant the petitions, so an appeal was filed last Friday.

Other amparos have been filed by birthmothers whose children were taken by force at the PGN and they are still pending resolution.

Question: Will adoptions from Guatemala open again sometime?

Answer: If it is left to the CNA, adoptions do not stand a chance. They have no idea of how to do them and are not prepared to supply the level of child care that the lawyers and hogars have supplied thus far. When the private hogars close, and the children stop being cared for privately, the CNA will have to find the way to duplicate those services or simply close down their office, because without the income of adoptions, and with an unreasonable law that expects that the private institutions have a highly qualified staff, excellent facilities, nutritious food, and proper medical care but dos not allow them to charge for their services, it is highly unlikely that many of them will remain open.

Question: Is it likley that the child I am adopting will come home?

Answer: Provided there is nothing really wrong with the adoption process and the birth mother does not claim the child back, yes, the chances are that your child will go home, even if now it looks so unlikely. Do not loose the faith and keep demanding collaboration from your authorities, that in an election year are so willing to be in the good graces of the voters. Remind them that the vote of an adoptive parent could the deciding vote.

The little girl was taken away by the PGN social worker who refused to let the director talk to her, to calm her down, because the girl was crying and did not even let her take her doll with her. When the PGN social worker saw the tears of the caregiver and the director of the hogar, said that they were giving the girl away into adoption, so she did not believe that they cared for those children or that they feel any love for them. As soon as the alleged birth mother saw the press people, burst into tears, and so did her entourage, in a well coordinated display of emotion, totally oriented towards the lenses of the news people who took them several pictures and eagerly filmed the waterworks.

The case will be brought to a Judge of Childhood and Adolescence who will start another abandonment process to determine if the mother is the birth mother and if she is a suitable option for the girl. Meanwhile, the frightened little girl will be who knows where, waiting for those heartless people to decide her life. If it turns out that the woman is not her mother, what will erase the harm done to the girl and to her adoptive parents? And if it turns out to be the mother, why is that she did not come forward to the court when publications of the picture and court in charge were made in two newspapers? It is understandable that the illiteracy and the poverty may prevent them from buying the newspapers, but the Police and the DA could very well have a collection of all those ads, to show them to those who denounce that their child is missing, and the DNA should be done in the less disruptive way.

The interviews of the birth mothers by the PGN/CNA are ILLEGAL, even if they are smooth and without any problems. To take the children away is ILLEGAL, because the law says that the children can be taken against the will of their parents and caregivers, only with judicial order and the PGN is doing it backwards. They snatch the children, and then go to a judge to validate what they did. The suspension of the adoption process, for whatever reason, is ILLEGAL, because the law very clearly says that the PGN has to give an opinion within three days, and there is no legal provision to justify the extension of that period.

The US Consul (same who passed list at the voting of the Adoptions Law in Congress last year) and Joint Council representatives Tom DiFilipo and Bruce Mossburg, visited the PGN last Tuesday, and it is our understanding that they advocated that the birthmother interviews were done in a respectful way, which misses totally the point that the interviews are illegal and that they should not take place at all. Doing the interviews politely and respectfully does not make them right. The CNA has absolutely nothing to do with grandfathered adoptions after the registration deadline of February 12 and in the remote possibility that they would have shown some interest in the situation of the children who need adoptions, that period also expired on February 12. Right now what they must do is to see how to become Hague Compliant, to be able to give families to all the children who need them and to set up state orphanages to provide the care that the private hoarse have been giving thus far and that no longer will give, once the children who are in them go home sometime this year. We really hope that after closing down a successful system that gave work to many people, provided homes and families to many children and kept older children off the streets, the Guatemalan government steps to the plate and opens nice orphanages, like the private ones that are closing now, and gives the children the food, care, medical attention and families that the lawyers and private institutions will no longer provide.

The press continues to malign the work of the adoption lawyers. Unsubstantiated accusations of coercing the mothers, of tricking them into giving away their children and of taking them by force are still published in one newspaper or another, depending on which was being paid by UNICEF to do their dirty job. A tool for that was the so called study done by an inexistent entity named ILPEC, that UNICEF presented at a big forum against adoptions in 2000, giving the credit for that so called study to such ghost entity as a way to distance UNICEF of what this entity very well knew that was a collection of lies, exaggerations and false accusations. The problem is even though everybody understands that the exception confirms the rule, when the subject is adoptions, it is the other way around. The exception makes the rule. A facilitator does something bad and instead of judging the facilitator, automatically adoptions are placed at the accused stool and people like Juan Carlos Llorca of Associated Press and many others, seize the opportunity to update one of their old articles full of venom about the corruption of adoptions in Guatemala.

What we have been seen and heard at the PGN this past weeks is very much what the media attributed to the lawyers: baby stealing, coercing of birth mothers, total disregard of the law and conning the mothers to make them change their minds, just to yank the children from their foster mothers and send them to the place of their choice, without a court order. It is a pity that neither the US consul nor the JCICS visitors used their influence to request to the PGN to put an end to those abuses that were limited just the day they were at the PGN, but continued as soon as they left. It was a very wasted opportunity to avoid the unnecessary anxiety and grief that this abuse of power is bringing to the waiting parents and to the interviewed mothers and as it was shown on Friday, to the directors of the hogars as well.

Because most Guatemalans would not adopt a child, much less an indigenous looking child, many find very difficult to understand why is that the Americans adopt them. A former PGN director, in her recommendation that the Hague Convention were ratified as soon as possible, wrote: The foreigners adopt children from Guatemala, not because they like them, but because it is easy to do it and we must prevent that. That summarizes the way the people in the government see the adoption of Guatemalan children by foreign citizens and since most of the Guatemalans do not set foot at the hotels where anyone could see that the children being adopted are treated with love by their visiting parents, we understand now that the harassment of the adoptive parents by the police was not only to obtain green papers with portraits of former American presidents, but as a successful way to keep the adoptive parents off the streets, and away from the public eye so they could not see that the children being adopted are loved beyond any physical feature by their adoptive parents.

UNICEF could not prevent the grandfather provision in the Adoptions Law of the in process cases, but it is doing its best to prevent those cases to be finalized. If anyone ever wonder who is paying for the salaries of the interviewers since neither the PGN nor the CNA are doing it, the answer is in the bottomless pockets of UNICEF. After giving to Oscar and Wendy Berger their farewell present for a job well done, regarding the passing of a draconian Adoptions Law, now they have to deal with the stubbornness of those who have been doing everything they can to finalize the adoptions that do not move forward, but seem to go backwards with the collaboration of different characters. Fundacion Sobrevivientes, whose sole purpose is to denounce the killing of women, suddenly turns against adoptions and gets three women who claim that their daughters were stolen and that they know that they are being adopted. Even though we feel sorry for anyone who suffers the loss of a child, to try to find the missing children of three women does not justify to steal as many children as possible every day, at the PGN. When the law does not mean anything to those who have the power and the employees of the PGN can take by force and with the help of the police, a child that is being legally adopted, for groundless reasons or clerical mistakes, the pain that the mothers who want their children to be adopted and the people who are adopting them is much more real than the pain of those women whose flimsy versions of the way they lost their children makes us seriously doubt of the authenticity of their pain and of their stories.

Last week, the reviewers of the PGN were pressured into taking back the already signed approvals by them and by Barrios, and review again the files, searching for anything that could be new previos. We were told that they refused to do so, but in view of the limited number of approved files being released, we are wondering if they caved in and did as they were told.

The order to bring the birthmothers, the children and the biological mothers (even in the case of abandoned children), to the PGN has no legal grounds. According to the Constitution, nobody has to obey an order that is not based on law. The risk of losing a child due to the dirty tricks of the interviewers is ever present. To bring a birthmother to the PGN and have a successful interview is not a guarantee of the file being released soon. The fact that only a few approved files were freed and that two of them belong to an agency that has been questioned and that is under investigation in the US, brings to mind the nagging suspicion that the adoption files have been kidnapped and that only those who pay the ransom are set free. In view of this hostage situation, a stronger plea for help must be filed by the affected US parents with their Congress and Senate members, to bring this matter to the attention of the Secretary of State, to use their almighty power to stop the delays and the trickery and let the adoptions be finalized according to the laws, not to the whims of each reviewer, interviewer or third level bureaucrat of the PGN.

An unpleasant misfortune imposed by law to the Guatemalan childhood was the success that UNICEF had (with its lobbying and huge contributions, that rumor has it that they were $900 thousand) to ensure the end of adoptions of abandoned children, success that it also had in other countries who heeded its ghostly stories, leaving thousands of boys and girls without a family and in a situation of wretched poverty, begging and prostitution, when they were not aborted, for lack of homes willing to adopt them. (I remember that the US Government suspended its aid to Unicef form indirectly promoting abortion).
There are many fooled by phrases like “They don’t want the children, because they are no longer a business”. It is a cruel cynicism to speak like that about those who use to give the services of receiving, supporting, sheltering, feeding, providing medicines, dental work, of doctors and education to abandoned children, recovering those expenses with voluntary contributions and with the collection of a fee for lending those services to the abandoned youth.
The term “trade of children” sounds as insidious as if it we criticize that the Press sells news for money or that the Unicef diplomats get money for their services. Regrettably, for reasons that come from very far away, since before Dickens, to earn money has a bad reputation, event though everybody does it, because there is nothing wrong with that and even churches request money ( "donations").
It is known of isolated cases of theft of children in Europe, in the United States and in other countries, where the remedy is not to punish thousands of children, but the few delinquents. Has anyone in Guatemala been punished? Do you know that the foreign adoptions are done mainly (95%) to the US and that its government requires two DNA maternity tests and previous authorization?
It is said that babies are abducted to extract organs, as if this does not require of sanitary facilities, qualified medical staff, compatibility testing and proof of origin and procedure by the recipient, a process difficult to achieve, especially in a clandestine way. If the government knows about this, why they do not apprehend the delinquents? Meanwhile, while more yellow and ghostly the tale is, the more it is liked by the morbid minds.
Now it turns out that only the Government can handle adoptions and, consequently, the private orphanages had to close and according to the Press, the adoptions have stopped, because the Government does not have neither the hogars nor the funds to care for those boys and girls. Taking care of them costs money that formerly was willingly paid, without being a burden to the public funds. Now the new bureaucracy resorts to give their care to “chosen" people who will have to be paid to cover up keeping expenses, etc. Now the people will have to support it with their taxes (Trade?, Business?, Bribes?).
The greatest damage, which obviously they do not care about, has been to deprive so many abandoned young people of a family, of a home to grow up and develop, of an opportunity to get an education, and of a promising future. This law constitutes a cruelty, and should be eliminated, even if that is not liked by the ambassadors of countries and institutions who "help" and that only because they give money they believe that they are entitled to interfere and impose their ideological judgments on what is not of their incumbency.

Siglo Veintiuno reported yesterday what Nineth Guevara, the director of the Section of Childhood and Adolescence of the PG, calls anomalies the mistakes found in several adoption files. Guevara says that the PGN will file criminal charges against 80 notaries. She is the same woman who took by force a baby girl against the will of her mother and grandparents last October. What the PGN is doing is not only reviewing the cases already approved by Barrios, which is totally illegal, but labeling the mistakes in the files that can be amended and that are cause of rejection for amendment (previos), as anomalies, and the notaries who preside those files, as delinquents. Since there are not legal grounds to prosecute the notaries, there is little chance that the PGN will actually file charges. The so called anomalies are actually typos, human errors and PGN requirements without legal grounds, results of an overzealous analysis of the files done by underpaid and jealous lawyers of the PGN, who are trying to justify their work by creating unnecessary obstacles. The least they have in mind is the best interest of the children. An example of that are the adoptions that were legally approved by the Family judges a year ago, and that were tangled in the appeal process filed by the PGN. After succeeding in getting back the files for its approval, after the court of appeals revoked the lower court approval, the PGN has had no other choice but to approve every one of them, stealing a whole year of the lives of those children, who were deprived during all that time of the love of their waiting families.

Associated Press, eager to attack adoptions as usual, is spreading the news that the Attorney General annulled fifteen adoptions for illegalities in the files. The truth is that those adoptions were actually approved by Barrios and there is no law that gives the new authorities the power to modify such approval. That is another display of shameful abuse of power of the PGN and of irresponsible journalism of Associated Press, who also collaborated in the closing of adoptions in Vietnam to US families.

The CNA should be setting up shelters for children who are being left abandoned in public places, instead of trying to take away the children already in process of adoption, Thus far, thirty two children have been found in garbage dumps, in the street and in vacant lots. Recently, a baby was found in a cardboard box just a few yards away from the PGN building. According to Nineth Guevara, of the PGN, those abandonments were done by the baby snatchers who dumped the children, afraid of being discovered. She has no explanation for the lack of complaints by the mothers of those children, who will have to be summoned during two months, according to her, through publication in two different newspapers of the pictures of the babies found, and if nobody claims them, the children will be ruled adoptable by the courts.

The announced suspension of adoptions during a month, may last for as long as the attorney general wants. The sign posted at the window of the PGN says that no adoption files will be released until further notice, not necessarily a month. In 2003, the PGN, acting as central authority and directed by Elizabeth Hernandez de Larios, the same lawyer who now directs the CNA, did not release any file during six months and it could have been more, because what they were planning then was to exhaust the financial reserves of the attorneys by tying up the cases for a long time, until they had to give up and surrender the children to the Central Authority, so Larios and her PGN accomplices could renegotiate the second half of the fee with those foreign parents who could afford them. Larios had no qualms in expressing her plans and to travel then to the US, expenses paid by adoptions agencies, to establish contacts with them in order to set up her monopoly of adoptions, just as she is doing it now.

ADA has been asked constantly if the children in process will go home. The answer is yes, but since the current government is showing as much respect for the rights of the birthmothers and adoptive parents and for the laws of the country, as the Nazis in Germany, we believe that the US government will have to intervene to restore the order in a situation that was created by them, when forced on Guatemala the passing of a law without the necessary preparation to implement it properly and by allowing the abuses that have been committed by the current authorities, while the US embassy claims that they cannot do anything, because it is an local matter, when they well know that an intercountry adoption is not a local matter and that they have to step up to the plate and fix the problems they created.

We know of a case where the birthmother expressed at her interview, in very clear terms that she wanted the adoption to be finalized, but the PGN took her child and sent him to a hogar, no explanations given. In other case, the birthmother expressed her desire to keep her children and they were given to her, right there. Even though we are not advocating for adoptions being finalized against the will of the birth mother, we cannot support a system of intimidating the birth mothers to such extent as to make them claim back the children that they voluntarily relinquished many months before. Today six children were taken by the CNA for no legal reasons.

The website of the CNA is an admission of guilt, and at the same time, a display of how untruthful they can be, when we all know that their intentions never were to protect the children but to try to steal the work they did not do. The last paragraph is self explanatory: no lawyers or notaries are needed to do an adoption with them, but they do not disclose the little detail that the Adoptions Law allows the CNA to charge foreign adoptive parents for their adoptions. Elizabeth Hernandez de Larios has been quoted in the newspapers saying that currently the lawyers charge the foreign parents up to sixty five thousand dollars for each adoption, which she very well knows that it is not true.

Two of the directors of the CNN traveled on Sunday to Washington, in a trip of six days, paid by the US embassy, according to a note published today by Siglo Veintiuno, page 6. In view of the role that the CNA has taken with the grandfathered cases, it looks more as a reward to them from the US DOS than an attempt to stop the abuses to the birth mothers by the CNA. One of the directors, Norma Elizabeth Robles Avila is the sister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Elizabeth Hernandez de Larios is the wife of the chief of staff of President Colom. Their trip includes visits with private adoption agencies, who are looking to establish a working relationship with the CNA.

If the real intention of the birthmother interviews were to identify the girls that supposedly were stolen to three women, it is unforgivable that the CNA/PGN are delaying the release of the adoptions of boys and of older girls. It more and more looks as if the CNA is trying to derail the notarial adoptions for a purpose and the PGN and the US DOS are their accomplices. The adoptive parents entered into those adoptions in good faith and the birthmothers and legal guardians of the children gave their consent to them. The formalities of the adoption process have fulfilled and all the PGN can do is to give its approval and release the files. The notaries have their hands tied, because if the amparo that is ready to be filed is dismissed, that will strengthen the position of the CAN/PGN and the US embassy will continue with its hands off approach of the situation. For that reason, the birthmothers and the children have been taken to the PGN by the notaries, to be verbally abused by the people interviewing them, who have the audacity to offer the birthmothers a monthly stipend if they take the child back. The notaries have to be at the PGN but are not allowed to witness the interview. Even strong women have left humiliated and in tears after they were interviewed.

The respect of the law no longer exists. The CNA and the PGN are making up their own rules in the so-called best interest of the child, hurting as many children, birth mothers and adoptive parents as possible. You must report this to your Congressmen and Senators, because if the US DOS is not supporting the abuses of the CNA/PGN, by consenting to them and paying trips to the perpetrators are as guilty as them.

Portillo Merlos said that they will interview the birth mothers of the cases that were already approved by Barrios. This is beyond his legal power. The arguments to support that measure are: that some of the notarial acts in some sdoption processes lack the signature of the lawyer who represents the adoptive parents and that some of the photocopies are not clear. How is the interview to birth mothers going to fix that is not explained by Portillo Merlos.

Yesterday we learned that the birthmother interviews will be held in the presence of the psychologist of the PGN, the same who kept a young birth mother for two hours, to convince her to claim her baby back, despite the clear opposition of the parents of the girl and the will of the girl, who did not sign the affidavit prepared by the PGN, and it was until they kidnapped the baby and promised the mother that if she came to the PGN she would get the baby back, that she signed it. After she did, the PGN people took mother and daughter and sent them to the Casa Alianza hogar for teen mothers, where they have been until now, unable to communicate with their family.

The interviews will also be witnessed by the lawyers of the District Attorney’s office, some other from the Human Rights Office, the same who has been claiming all the time that all adoptions are illegal and who has filed amparos to try to stop adopted children from leaving the country. The press will also be present at this interview, that is looking more like the Inquisition, than that an effort to know if everything was all right with the adoption.

The birth interviews by the PGN are illegal as they have not legal grounds and constitute an abuse of power. This week an amparo will be filed to try to get a court order to stop the PGN form suspending the approval of cases and to release the already approved cases. We will do our best to make the court to see that the PGN is abusing their power, the illegality of their acts, the harm done to the people involved in an adoption process.

The diligent lawyers of the PGN have been warning the Social Workers of the family court not to release the files to the notaries because they will come to review them. They also have been at the Civil Registries telling them that the final deeds of adoptions should not be recorded. All this is also illegal, but the PGN has a power over the other bureaucrats that has no explanation, but it is very strong.

An order that is not based on law should not be obeyed, says the Guatemalan Constitution and since the order to present the birth mothers to the PGN is not based on law, should not be obeyed. Nobody should be tried for wanting to give to her child a better life, and much less by a made up court whose only purpose is to prove that the mothers are not smart enough and did not know what they were doing when they gave up their children. The CNA summoned a birth mother of two sisters because the girls were so cute, and did not let the woman go until she admitted to take the girls back. Instead of having a loving family with means to give the girls what hey need, they will go back to a mother who cannot support them, and who works in the oldest profession, and who would not give them a good life. But for the CNA director, it was a triumph, to have rescued two girls from adoption.

Two days ago, Enrique Urizar, the ADA president, Dina Castro, former president and Olga Ogaldez, current president of the Institute of Family Law met with the US ambassador and the consul, to discuss the problem of the suspension of the adoptions by the PGN. The diplomat expressed his concern but stated in very clear terms that they cannot interfere, because it is an internal matter and they are bound to respect that. The bag of tricks that they used last year to get the Adoptions Law passed is a distant memory for the US diplomats. They also said that it will be long time until the US will do adoptions with Guatemala, because they are new at being Hague and Guatemala does not have a system in place that would allow it.

The adoptive parents have rights. Even if the adoption is not finalized, the birth mothers have given their consent to the adoptions and their saliva to prove that they are the mothers of the children being adopted. The fact that some children have been abducted, does not have the power to halt the adoptions in process. The presumption of innocence also applies here, and until somebody proves that a child being adopted was not relinquished by the mother of the child, the adoption cannot be stopped. There are more than two thousand children waiting and three girls missing. We are sure that there should be a less harming way to find if any of those girls is among the girls and boys being adopted, if only the real purpose where that, but it is looking more and more as an orchestrated way to derail the system and stop the children from going home. We msut fifth that.

This is the moment to call your representatives in the US and demand that the US diplomats do everything in their power to see that the adoptions in process are finalized in a timely matter without further and illegal requirements.

ADA is poised to fight this illegality and to win, because regardless of what the new authorities of the PGN say and the US DOS wants, those children have families who are adopting them, who love them and they belong with them, not being held I in custody as evidence of a crime that never was committed.

We have been waiting for the National Council of Adoption to start to work, which does not mean to have a functional system up and running. We mean the literal meaning of the word work, which is what we expect them to do, since they were appointed to do a job not just to hold press conferences and criticize what the notaries or the PGN has been doing. The CNA claims that they have not done anything because they do not have the funds to do it. The official newspaper published two weeks ago the executive order to release the funds for it, stating that eight of the ten million quetzals granted to the CNA are for salaries, the rest is for the implementation of the CNA, and not a penny is for the care of the children who are cared by the private institutions who will no longer support them, for lack of the adoptions income.

Mario Gordillo was fired as Attorney General, not only because he was so corrupt, embezzled the funds of the PGN taking his wife and children in long trips to different countries, and broke the law in more ways than one, but also because it was necessary for the CNA to have an ally at the PGN, and Gordillo refused to obey the orders of Elizabeth Hernandez de Larios, who has self-appointed as President of the CNA

The new Attorney General, Baudilio Portillo Merlos was selected by Carlos Larios for that position and it was expected that he would show his appreciation by following the instructions of the wife of his benefactor. When Elizabeth de Larios was appointed as chief of the Central Authority in 2003, not a single case was processed. Her intentions, as she had no qualms in expressing them, were that the Central Authority would finish the in process cases and collect the second part of the fee owed to the notaries. When she was told that the notaries did not pocket the whole fee, that the legal expenses and taxes, medical bills and care of the children have to be covered with that amount, she said that the notaries would have to get donations to cover those expenses. She was told that there was not way that she could pull that off. Thanks to the successful constitutional challenges against the illegal accession to the Hague Convention, Elizabeth de Larios could not get away with her plans.

Some years later, after Elizabeth de Larios and her husband Carlos supported Alvaro Colom, are being rewarded for their efforts. Carlos Larios has been as appointed Chief of Staff of Alvaro Colom and Elizabeth is the legal advisor to the wife of Alvaro, the very powerful Sandra Torres Casanova. It seems that Elizabeth de Larios has not lost her fantasy of collecting the second part of the adoption fees on all the cases, so after getting rid of the people of Wendy de Berger, she got herself appointed as delegate of the Secretariat of Social Welfare and is ready to take over.

The lawyer who was appointed instead of Barrios is a very respected lawyer, Flory de Leon who was stopped from releasing the already approved files by the new Attorney General, who told her that Elizabeth de Larios called him to tell him that not a single file should be released to the notaries, because the National Council for Adoptions will review them. Some days ago, in a case where there were some inconsistencies in the birth certificates of two children, the PGN notified the NCA, who summoned the notary, the biological mothers and both children. Only one of the birth mothers was located, but regardless of the presence of the other birth mother, both children were taken away and placed who knows where.

President Alvaro Colom will meet with the Congressional Coalition of Adoption Institute, on Tuesday 29th. This is the moment to call your representatives in Congress to support the article 56 of the Adoption Law that removes the adoptions registered before the National Council of Adoption, from their scope. We are not asking for special favors, we are just expecting that everybody respects that adoptions in process must be approved by the PGN, not by the NCA and that the time to give an opinion is of three days, not two months or more.

According to the ever biased and anti adoptions Prensa Libre, an organization funded by UNICEF with the sole purpose of disrupting adoptions, named “Movimiento Social de los Derechos de la Ninez, la Adolescencia y la Juventud” is asking for protection for the 2,398 children who were registered with the NCA and whose adoptions are still pending approval,. Their allegations are also supported by the same people of Casa Alianza who aided and abetted the unspeakable behavior of Bruce Harris and who could not protect the children under their care of the abuses of their director. Ignoring the fact that a child needs to pass a second DNA test before getting the visa to travel to The United States, they are claiming that the notaries filed a lot of inexistent adoptions, in order to present later another child. Elizabeth de Larios is echoing this allegations and as a result of that plans to summon the notary who will have to come to them, with the birthmother and the child being adopted. The article is at http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2008/abril/25/234342.html

Today, the PGN posted a sign stating that all adoptions are suspended until further notice. On Monday, all lawyers and notaries who have pending cases must go to the PGN to talk to the Attorney General, and explain to him, that is sweet of him to be so grateful to those who gave him the job, but that he can express his gratitude with a heartfelt thanks and do his job according to the law. In case he does not remove the sign and continues withholding the adoption files, all sort of legal actions will be filed against him. Agencies and parents must tell their lawyers and notaries to be at the PGN at nine in the morning this coming Monday April 28th.

There is no need to panic, because we will not let the NCA take over the children. But it is good that the Central Authority is showing their true colors, so everybody stops believing that they have the best interest of the children at heart. They are not trying to set up a system to enable needy children to find shelter now and safe, loving, permanent homes later. They are just trying to harvest the fruits of the work that they did not do and make adoptions as difficult as possible and will succeed only if all of us who want pending adoptions to be finalized, let them do it.

Susana Luarca

ADA and other lawyers have filed constitutional challenges against the elimination of the notarial process of adoptions and we all expect that the seven lawyers and notaries who are temporarily magistrates of the Constitutional Court, do not bend the rules and decide against the clear wording of the Constitutional provisions that protect the work of the university graduates, such as the notaries. They refused to suspend during the time that it takes to process the challenges, the detrimental effects of the unconstitutional elimination of the notarial process, stating that they did not deem it necessary. It is obvious that to prevent someone form doing his/her work is evidently harmful, and it is even more obvious that it is far more harmful to deprive orphans and abandoned children of their right to a family.

The Hague Conference for International Private Law is an international entity that Guatemala has nothing to do with. Not being a member of such entity and never attending its meetings, our country remained immune to its negative effects on adoptions. Far from setting golden standards for adoptions, what the treaty created by UNICEF and marketed by The Hague Convention for Inter Country Adoptions does, is to close them down. We witnessed that effect in 2003, fought against it and won at the Constitutional Court. During the six months that adoptions were closed in 2003, even though the United States was not a party to such convention, when adoptions were paralyzed and harmed the interests of its citizens, the US DOS simply stopped accepting initial documents of new adoptions and did nothing to claim their Third Party Status according to the Vienna Convention, also known as The Treaty of Treaties, that both Guatemala and the US are parties to, in order to remove from the scope of the convention, the adoptions done by the citizens of the United States. Seeing the issues more clearly than the US DOS, a Guatemalan Court of Amparo, granted the relief requested through an Amparo resource by nearly three hundred notaries (who are also lawyers) and ordered the PGN to proceed to process the adoptions to the United States. The Attorney General disregarded the order and was not prosecuted just because the Constitutional Court restored the order by ruling unconstitutional the approval by Congress of the Hague Convention.

Laura Martínez-Mora and Ignacio Goicoechea, the liaison for Latin America of the Hague Conference, are right now in Guatemala and according to the ever biased Prensa Libre, they stated their satisfaction because the situation of adoptions in Guatemala has improved very much. It does not take a lot to figure out what the real purpose of The Hague Convention is, if they think that no adoptions at all and a central authority that does not work amount as a great improvement. The same newspaper states that Holt International determined that in Guatemala there are 127 private orphanages (a year ago there were 500, according to the mission report of The Hague Conference) that shelter 5000 children (half of the amount of children who were in private orphanages a year ago). Elizabeth de Larios, who was the director of the Central Authority in 2003, and who is now one of the three directors of the CNA, says that they are very sure that they will work without anomalies and there will not be any more traffic of children. And by the way it looks now, not any more adoptions, either.

The Hague Convention can be implemented without closing down adoptions. The problem is that no country has done it yet. The United States will continue doing adoptions with non-Hague countries and trying to close them down at the same time. We only want a law that keeps the many good features of the former notarial system and at the same time implements The Hague Convention in a way consistent with our Constitution and with our laws. But we cannot accept that no adoptions at all, one fourth of the orphanages that were running a year ago and half the children who used to be in orphanages, is a step in the right direction. We believe that simple rules, easy to follow and easy to supervise, are the solution to the system. When the entity that has the right to approve the adoptions has all the power and no supervision, as it happens with the PGN, corruption blooms with total impunity. The same can be said of the Mixco Civil Registry, where it is vox populi that final deeds of adoptions are rejected for insignificant reasons unless a bribe is paid, and the Santa Catarina Pinula Civil Registry, where a birth certificate of a child is issued for fifteen quetzals (two US dollars) and the same certificate of an adopted child costs two thousand quetzales each, and since it takes three of them to finish an adoption (one for the passport, one for the visa and one for the parents), the Civil Registry of such town has no qualms in over charging six thousand quetzales (almost as much as what each of the reviewers of the PGN make a month) to issue them, despite a Constitutional Court ruling that stated that all children are equal and that no distinctions can be made between adoptive and birth children.

Our country has many problems, but adoptions are not one of them. The reason why Guatemalan adoptions are being so maligned is to finish something that was successfully done. The bad publicity turned adoptions into something shameful, when it was something that not only is protected by the Constitution but was duly regulated and that gave work to all the people who helped to make them possible, and changed positively the lives of the children being adopted. We refuse to give up and let Guatemala become the next Romania. With half of the children suffering malnourishment, a million children working to support themselves and their families and one of the highest rates of infant death in the Western Hemisphere, the children of Guatemala need that all of us speak up for them and work to make it possible that adoptions, that used to be the only way out for many children, opens again.

In a press conference held yesterday at the PGN, Gordillo expressed that he will act as Attorney General until March 2010, because he was appointed by Oscar Berger in 2006, for a period of four years, and that he will file legal resources to prevent Colom from firing him.

President Colom has said that he needs someone who does not have a conflict of interests, like Godillo has, because he belongs to another political party, has a wife in a high position and he is not handling efficiently the adoption processes. We can attest that it is not only adoption processes that are not being properly handled, but all the processes where the PGN has to act as such. Because of the PGN interference, the abandonment processes take years and that affects negatively the children, because the worst enemy of an abandoned child is time. The PGN lawyers do not go to the hearings, or demand unnecessary documents to prevent the judge from ruling on the merits of the case and when the child is ruled abandoned, the PGN files an appeal, that even if it is not granted, it takes many months of the life of the child who is waiting.

There is need for a change in the way the PGN is being handled. Gordillo must go. It is necessary that someone who has the best interest of the children at heart, is appointed as Attorney General. This is the time when you can tell President Colom, the problems with your adoptions, due to the groundless requests of the PGN. His email is cartapresidente@scspr.gob.gt. Don't wait any longer. Write now and make a difference in the lives of the Guatemalan children.

ADA has been successful in many ways, because it is thanks to the work of its members, that adoptions were possible in Guatemala, long after they became history in the rest of Latin America, exception made of Colombia, where a small number of adoptions is done, mainly to Europeans, who can afford to stay two months or more in Colombia.

Guatemala had a system that had many good features, that ensured the transparency and the willingness of the birth mother of the adopted child, to place him for adoption. Instead of keeping the good features of that system, UNICEF, Casa Alianza, and the US DOS, with the complicity of the former president Berger and his wife Wendy, forced on the Guatemalan Congress a law that creates a system that will not work and that if it does, it will be far worse than the one they eliminated.

On March 14th., 2007, the US DOS posted a list of FAQ to the adoptive parents, where they stated their concerns about the Guatemalan adoption process:

A: The major U.S. Government concerns about the Guatemalan adoption process include:
1. Conflicts of Interest: We are concerned that Guatemalan notaries may determine a child's eligibility for adoption, authorize the adoption deed, and register the adoption at the Civil Registrar. In the same case, the notary or his/her staff may also directly interact with birth mothers, solicit consents for an adoption, and handle the referral of the child to prospective adoptive parents. The Department of State does not believe that the notaries, given these multiple roles, can truly act objectively and in the best interests of the various parties.

ADA: a) The eligibility for adoption of the child was determined by the birth mother, who gave her consent to the adoption, and by the law, that stated who could be adopted; b) the notary authorizes the final deed AFTER the Social Worker appointed by the Family Court gave a favorable opinion, AND the PGN APPROVED the adoption. c) The registration of the final deed was done by the Civil Registry, not by the Notary. d) The foreign parents were approved to adopt by an authorized Social Worker in their country and were allowed to adopt by the authorities of their country of residence; the birth mother was aware that her child was being adopted by a foreign person or couple.

The comment of the US DOS: The Department of State does not believe that the notaries, given these multiple roles, can truly act objectively and in the best interests of the various parties, is very interesting because the Adoptions Law created an entity that will not have any oversight, because they are the only ones who will do it all. Even though the Courts of Minors will rule the adoptability of the children, who will do the placement, and charge for it, will be the National Council of Adoptions (CNA) who will also qualify the parents and who will do the adoptions, because the judge will only confirm with a sentence, the adoption done by such entity.

2) Lack of Government Oversight: Despite these critical roles in the adoption process, the notaries are largely unregulated. Public oversight is minimal. Particularly in cases in which prospective adoptive parents are told that the birth mother relinquished her rights to her child voluntarily, the U.S. Government is concerned that social services to birth mothers are extremely limited and that their consents may have been induced by money or threats. Monetary incentives and high fees drive completion of the adoption more than protecting the children, the birth parents, and the prospective adoptive parents. The Department is aware of a growing number of cases of adopting parents who have told us that they are being extorted for very large amounts of money by their local representatives in order to complete an adoption.

ADA: It is not true that the notaries are largely unregulated. There is a Notarial Code that establishes the duties of the notaries and there is an specific law that allows them to preside over voluntary matters, which is also a law of Congress that has been in effect since 1977, with very good results. The Adoption Law eliminated the articles that regulate the adoption process in that law, which goes against express prohibition of the Constitution. ADA has filed a constitutional challenge against article 67 of the Adoptions Law before the Constitutional Court.

It is not true that public oversight is minimal, and the US DOS well knows that the children are willingly relinquished by their mothers, but nevertheless, they try to discredit the decision of the birth mothers, by saying that they do it for money, or to cast doubts on those who work to make the adoption possible, by saying that they coerce the mothers, as if there were no police stations to complain if such thing happened.

The complaints of adoptive parents against local representatives have to be taken seriously and proper complaints before the local authorities should be filed. ADA is working with adoptive parents, whose local representatives are not working properly, which only proves aside from the public interest in keeping the system above board, there is also interest from the adoptions professionals to see that those who are not doing things properly, be banned from doing adoptions. We have found that most of those who act illegally are foreign facilitators who do not even have a working permit. ADA is very interested in holding them accountable, as well as the notaries and lawyers who work with them.

3) Unregulated Foster Care: Like the notaries, Guatemalan foster care providers are not regulated or checked by the Guatemalan government for compliance with any standards. Many Guatemalan foster families have demonstrated their love and concern for the children in their care, and American adoptive parents have expressed gratitude for how the foster families cared for the children while the adoptions were in process. Unfortunately, however, the Department of State is also aware of instances of grossly inadequate care for young children in foster home situations.; There are cases in which American adoptive families who have completed a Guatemalan adoption later learned that the foster care provider or others in the household had physically or sexually abused the children.

ADA. The Guatemalan government neither cares nor provides any child care, so it is a blessing that there were lawyers who trusted the children to foster mothers, and to private orphanages to care for the children while the adoption was done. The possibility of a child being physically or sexually abused is always present, even with the biological families and it is very common in the foster care system in the United States, according to what has been said by those who as children were in foster care. Generally speaking, the children in foster care in Guatemala are well cared and loved by their caregivers. Foster care is a temporary solution, but if the US Department of State were really worried for the wellbeing of the children who are in foster care, they would expedite their visas, instead of making it so difficult. It takes a great effort to file documents at the embassy to get authorizations for the DNA tests and to get the final interview. The adoption process in Guatemala used to be done in a couple of months, but in what seems to be an agreement between the US embassy and the PGN, adoptions take many months now and it is common that babies whose adoptions started when they were babies, have their first birthday in Guatemala.

4) Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption: Guatemala has been a party to the Hague Convention since March 2003, but it has never enacted Hague-consistent legislation or instituted Hague-consistent practices that would provide children the protections that are now lacking. Guatemala has not established the required central authority to oversee intercountry adoption processing under the Convention and has not yet taken numerous other steps the Convention requires. The U.S. Department of State, the Hague Permanent Bureau (which oversees the Convention) and other countries have consistently expressed concern about these and other problems with Guatemalan adoptions. In fact, many Hague Convention countries have stopped adoptions from Guatemala.

ADA: When Guatemala became a party to the Hague Convention, adoptions started after March 5th. 2003 were not approved by the PGN, who was appointed as Central Authority. The Central Authority, during six months did not even review those files. They did nothing. In August 13, 2003, exactly a year after the Congress approved The Hague Convention, the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional that approval by Congress and in September, when the sentence was published, the order was restored and the PGN reassumed its role as reviewer. During those difficult six months we did no see any country, not even the US, whose citizens were waiting for their adopted children to come home, worried because nothing was being done.
The Adoptions Law established an entity named National Council for Adoptions as the Central Authority. After a legal battle to remove the people appointed by Berger, the people appointed by Colom, aside from doing the registration of the in process adoptions, have not done anything. The amparo filed by ADA has not been ruled, but just by filing it we got what we wanted, that is to say, that the CNA did not condition the registration of the adoptions, to an investigation of each case. If that had been the case, adoptions would have been paralyzed for years, while they investigated and approved each case, which was not what they were meant to do.

The Adoptions Law has accomplished that the notarial system is no longer possible, at least until the Constitutional Court restores it. Because the CNA is not working, the children who were born after such law became effective and whose mothers want to place them for adoption, are in a very precarious situation, because for those children much worse than being abandoned, it is to be kept by mothers who reject them, or who cannot provide for them. Abuse and neglect go undetected, until the child turns out dead, which does not make the headlines of the newspapers, the same tabloids that do not spare ink to criticize and malign adoptions.
The same international bureaucrats and diplomats who criticized the amount paid by foreign adoptive parents for an adoption in Guatemala, and who were very vocal in their opposition to the system that very successfully and against all odds gave families to a few thousand of children every year, remain silent and do not express any concern for the lack of activity of the National Council of Adoptions and for the fate of the unwanted children.
The accomplishment of closing down adoptions in Guatemala will be reinforced by the US when they become a party to the Hague Convention. The DOS has said that despite Guatemala being a party to the Hague convention and despite the Adoptions Law, their system is not Hague compliant and for that reason, the US will nor accept that its citizens adopt children from our country.

Adoption and marriage are very similar. Both create a bond of love between two people who are not related by blood, as a result of the agreement of two consenting adults, or if they are underage, by the adult who has their legal custody. Even though the child who is being adopted cannot express his consent to the adoption, it is assumed that the parents who represent him, have his best interest in mind when they decided to place him for adoption. A similar situation happens in marriage, when the children are born into that union. Those children did not ask to be born, and it is assumed that their parents wanted them to love them and to keep them happy and healthy. In the same way that the State does not prevent the marriage of a man and a woman, because that is part of the private rights of the citizen, established in the Fourteen amendment of the US Constitution and in article 47 of the Guatemalan Constitution, it should not limit the rights of the citizens to adopt, regardless of where the child that they want to adopt was born, in the same way that the State does not prevent a citizen to marry someone who lives in another country. To adopt a child is also part of the private rights of the citizen, and it should be asserted as something that one can do without some State entity saying that it is not possible to do it from certain country,
The war against adoptions is not motivated by a genuine interest in the welfare of the children. The reason beneath the merciless attacks to a system that has been essential to many children escaping death, hunger, mistreatment, is because it has proven to be successful. The US DOS does not want our children coming into the US. Not even as tourists, if they can prevent it, as they have done with my two younger children who I adopted four years ago, and who were denied US tourist visas and no matter how many interviews we had and how many documents I presented, the visas to my two children were not issued. My biological daughters got their US visas when they were newborns, without any problem, and so did all my Guatemalan born nieces and nephews. The only conclusion I can draw of that denial of visa, is that adopted children are discriminated against by the US.
ADA is committed to find the way to keep doing adoptions, to offer that option to the women who cannot raise their children and to the children who need homes, even if that upsets the plans of UNICEF, the modern Herod, and of the US DOS, who worries that the children are in an unregulated and good foster care, but do not care if they are tossed in the garbage dumps.

We are setting up the way to accept the donations that have been offered to help us with the legal battle to restore adoptions. We will let you know when it is ready and we thank you beforehand for your support.

Meanwhile, the Consejo Nacional de Adopciones does not look like it will take off any time soon. According to what Marilys Barrientos de Estrada told me, the CNA is temporarily at the library of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, in zone ten, waiting for the ten million quetzals to be given to the CNA. Until that happens, they do not plan to do any work. When she was asked about the situation of the children, she said that they will not open orphanages, that only those who are registered will be able to keep housing children. When she was told that the private hogars will have to close, because they too, need money to work, she said that it will be the Bienestar Social hogars the ones who will house the children. The little detail that Bienestar Social does not have hogars for babies, escapes her. One thing is certain: the children who do not have a family, are suffering. The situation for them is worsening and there is very little we can do, because the hogars are watching the pennies, since nobody knows how long the siege will last.

On February 29th, we filed a Constitutional challenge against the part of article 67 of the Adoptions Law that eliminated the articles 28,29,30,31,32 and 33 of the Law 54-77 that established the notarial process of adoptions, based on different articles of the Constitution that establish the protection to the right to work as a professional, when one has a degree issued by the universities of the country. The constitutional protection to perform professional duties cannot be eliminated by a lower law, because such law would be null and void. We have no doubts that the Constitutional Court will uphold the challenge and that the notarial process will be restored. Not to do so, would go against everything the Constitutional Court stands for. The lawyers have never refused to be under the supervision of the PGN and certainly will not reject the supervision of the CNA, but we are not willing to see that our professional practice is eliminated, just because someone, in a foreign country, declared the war to lawyers who handle adoptions, knowing very well that only the lawyers have succeeded in providing permanent loving homes to the children who do not have them. Six months had the PGN as Central Authority in 2003, to do something to prove that they could come up with a better system. They did nothing. Aside from the registration of the in-process cases, the CNA has not done anything in two months. Children keep being born, and there are no provisions for them. The Courts of Minors do not know where to send the children left at the hospitals and in public places. Two months after the Adoptions Law took effect; its lethal effects are being felt by the children who are supposedly, those who were being protected by such law.

The Constitutional Court admitted the challenge, but still has to rule about the preliminary suspension of the article of the Adoptions Law that was challenged.

There are other legal matters that are better paid than adoptions. Criminal law is one of them. A criminal lawyer makes in one morning what an adoption lawyer makes after many months and sometimes a year of trying to overcome the resistance of every bureaucrat who thinks that his job is to make it as difficult as possible, that children find loving and permanent homes, in the shortest possible time. To justify their job, they come up with all kind of reasons, all of them in the name of the protection of the rights of the children. The Adoptions Law leaves all the process in their hands, and in the absence of a lawyer working to get a home to the child, the processes will take for as long as the bureaucrats want. They already have said that the adoptions now will take two or three years, but that they will be transparent. A legal process can be short and transparent. Length and legal do not go together.

The PGN keeps working in their usual slow pace, with rumors of the Attorney General being kicked out, which is very likely, since there are many things that he has to explain about his very mediocre performance as Attorney General. The new AG will appoint the lawyer who will substitute Barrios. Even though with the Adoptions Law, the PGN has nothing to do with the adoptions, when the notarial process is restored, the PGN will be again, the entity who oversees the legality of the adoptions done before a notary. The lawyers do not oppose State oversight. What we oppose is that laws are being passed just to please the international community, that faceless ghost that has the power to manipulate Congresses in poor countries like Guatemala, without caring that the lives of may children will be negatively affected by such legislation. That is why we challenge it. Because it is the fair thing to do.

By this time, must of you have received word that the adoption of your child was successfully registered. The last information we got came on Tuesday, about seven in the evening, while the people at the CNA kept working to finish their task before the stroke of midnight, although no one was submitting new cases at that time, just waiting for the registration numbers. Prensa Libre, biased against adoptions as always, quotes negative remarks of the new appointed directors, Marilys de Estrada and Elizabeth de Larios, who according to PL, expressed their surprise and concern for the high amount of children being registered, questioning where do they come from. For their information, those children are a small fraction of the more than 35,000 children who die every year of curable diseases and that thanks to adoption, will live happy and healthy lives, surrounded by the love of their forever families.

In case you wonder, no constancies will be issued. The number and seal of the CNA on the first page of the copy of the four page form is enough proof of registration. No investigation of the information provided in the four page form will be done by the CNA, because as ADA stated, the information was none of their busieness and the purpose of the form was for registration only, not for investigation. That is something that the amparo helped to make clear, although the Amparo Court has not ruled on it. Denial of the suspension of the offense act or law is not necessarily a denial of the amparo.

Added to the adoption file, it will open the gates of the PGN. After a month and a half of not admitting any cases, the amount of files being submitted or resubmitted at the PGN, will create a flood of cases. We hope that the reviewers and their reviewers as well, realize that looking for reasons to reject, that are not even required by law, only adds to their workload and that by delaying the cases, more than hurting the lawyer who has to wait longer to get paid, they are hurting a child who needs a family. More than ever, it is time that the PGN realizes that nobody opposes the thorough review of the cases, but that it is beneath them to display their power, by rejecting the same case, over and over, just because they can do it.

If an adoption in process was not registered with the CNA, that adoption cannot be finished according to the notarial process. The child will be placed by the CNA. If an abandonment decree was not ruled last year, the court will rule, when at last it does, that the child must be placed with a family by the CNA, not by the director of the hogar, who still will have the legal custody but not the right to find a suitable family for the child.

Taking into account the Guatemalan-last-minute factor and the problem with the former directors who clung to their positions way after they were fired, and the lack of funds to work, because even the registration was done all by hand, as if there were no computers and other gadgets to make life easier, we see with great concern that there are no plans to implement child care services. The lawyers keep getting petitions of mothers who want to place their children for adoption and there is not a place where they can be directed to do so. The registration of in process cases was very important, but so is the care of children whose mothers cannot support or keep them. Thus far, there are no alternatives for them. UNICEF must be very happy that those children will be tossed out in a garbage dump or left at any public place, at the mercy of whoever finds them, as it has happened in all the countries where UNICEF has closed down adoptions.

ADA is deeply concerned for the welfare of the children and for the right of the mothers who choose to give a better life to the children they cannot keep. Because we are fully convinced that the State of Guatemala is not prepared to assume the enormous responsibility of taking care and finding families for the needy children, we cannot sit back and watch how the number of children of the street grows, while Casa Alianza and UNICEF make better and more heart wrenching videos of the terrible situation of the children in Guatemala, to increase the donations of unsuspecting souls, who don’t know that the money they donate, will never go to alleviate the situation of those children, because for those organizations, children are like animals in a zoo. Must be kept caged, so people can watch them. They cannot be let out of Guatemala, so they can be visually exploited. What a shame!

For those reasons, ADA will remain filing all the necessary legal actions to restore the rights of the mothers, of the children, of the foster mothers, of the private orphanages and of the law professionals, to participate in the adoption process, in a Hague complying system, that will not leave it entirely in the hands of the government of Guatemala. We trust that justice will prevail, and that this State centralized system which is not respectful of our democratic system and our Constitution will be ruled unconstitutional and that the opportunities for the children will open again.