In 1996, Guatemala saw the end of its 36-year civil war and a rise in the number of children adopted out of Guatemala to other countries, many of whom ended up adopted by families in the United States. As allegations of corruption and trafficking in the Guatemalan adoption system mounted, however, adoption channels began to close. For those Guatemalan adoptees in the United States who are now coming of age, there are some unanswered questions and many are traveling back to Guatemala to find out about their birth families, unsure what they will uncover. Adoptive parents, too, have begun to wonder about the circumstances of the adoptions and of the birth families.
“Roughly half of all the adoptions by Americans entailed some type of impropriety — from outright abduction of infants by Guatemalan racketeers to baby-selling to various types of coercion and deception that induced mothers to relinquish their children,” said Carmen Monico of Elon University, who has conducted extensive research on adoption in Guatemala. This article tells the story of several Guatemalan adoptees and their adoptive parents as they reunite with their birth families in Guatemala.