the sad reality of Guatemala...and our adoption

Within this post are excerts from the head of our agency. Although this was hard for us to read and especially frustrating to realize how much longer we still have to wait, we do feel a sense of peace in the midst of our adoption and are moving towards compassion for the people of Guatemala and their situation, especially Micaiah's birthmother, Heidy.

The matter of getting Heidy and her mother in the same place, at the same time for the interview AND having the PGN psychologist be present as scheduled and actually conduct the interview (because in many cases the birth mothers are turned away and told to return another day because of the caseload), is far from simple. Heidy and her mother live in an extremely remote area, at least 5 or 6 hours by car from Guatemala City. Even when it is not the rainy season (as it is now) it is difficult to get into the area by car. I have spent a great deal of time traveling in the interior of Guatemala, and I can tell you from personal experience that getting to the homes of many of these families, is no mean feat. Usually it requires a four wheel drive because the roads are either very poor or are reduced to rough dirt/rock tracks. In some cases, you can't get there by car or truck and you have to either go by motorcycle or hike in, often up or down a mountain face.

Prior to making a trip to meet with or bring in Heidy or another birth mother, the attorney has the contact (the third party who in all Guatemalan adoption cases is the liasion between the birth mother and the attorney), a local person who knows the birth mother fairly well, get in touch with the birth mother to let them know the attorney plans to come or needs her to come to Guatemala City. It's really a team approach to the communication and transportation of the birth mother in such a case.

We have to keep in mind that Heidy, notwithstanding that she has had a child, is a child herself. She is also Mayan, which means that prior to this situation she has probably never been outside her close-knit, remote community, and she either speaks no Spanish or very little Spanish. In the very macho Guatemalan society, women, children and the Maya are undervalued and seriously discriminated against. Although the civil war is technically over, the human rights abuses still abound and the Maya of Guatemala of every generation are living with a legacy of fear, discrimination, and abuse. It's hard to explain, but when a group of people lives with such oppression for so long, they come to be very distrustful and very pessimistic about events in their lives that they have no control over or that they do not have experience with.

So while I have never met Heidy, I know her in the sense that I know many young Mayan girls and women and am familiar with their situation. She is probably frightened, depressed, demoralized and confused about what she has been going through. You have no idea what sacrifice these women make to complete an adoption; often they lose friends, family and/or employment by taking the time to attend appointments for the adoption case. Sometimes their very lives are in danger if their family finds out so they have to do everything under a cloak of secrecy, lying and making up stories about where they are going when they leave their community (something they ordinarily never do) to go to Guatemala City for appointments. I know that my son's birth mother, with whom I have been in contact for 5 years, has to this day not told her parents about my son's existence because they would be so upset with her that her father would probably beat her, because even though she is almost 30 years old now, men in Guatemala hold that kind of control over the women in their lives.

Bringing Heidy and her mother into the City for days at a time may sound like a good idea, but you have to look at it from the Guatemalan perspective, not the perspective of our comparatively privileged American lives. Their family obligations or work obligations that they have, cannot be replaced by simply paying them for lost work time. They would be very uncomfortable staying at a hotel in the City, away from their traditional way of life, and as I think Aimee mentioned to you, Heidy's and her birth mother's ongoing consent to the adoption doesn't mean that they will or should be expected to consent to being sequestered in this fashion.

Some of the delay in getting the first and now the second interview accomplished, has been in terms of Heidy and her mother coming to the City, and some has been solely in the control of PGN ie them not following through on conducting interviews as scheduled. Initially, we were told the interviews were only being done on Fridays but they have expanded the dates apparently to try to keep up with the volume of these cases.

Aimee may have already shared this with you or you may have seen it if you read our PalmettoKids list, but the reason these interviews are being done (aside from the obvious reason of ensuring that a minor birth mother is making this decision without being forced or manipulated into doing so) is that PGN found evidence of fraud in some cases involving minor birth mothers. That sparked a huge investigation of that facilitator's cases and it means the attorneys in the Minors section of PGN (who have to review this and all other minor birth mother cases after the interview(s) is/are complete and before it goes back to the regular PGN attorney assigned to it) are overwhelmed with working on that investigation so other cases not under active investigation, like yours, are being delayed. We have another case with a minor birth mother in which the second interview by the psychologist was completed on Tuesday. The attorney on the case spoke to the attorney in the Minors section to ask about timelines to expect the case to be released back to the regular PGN attorney; she was told that it would likely be a month before it would be released from Minors section and thereafter it has to be approved by the regular PGN attorney and signed off on by the PGN director before it would be released as approved. This doesn't necessarily mean your case will have the same delay once the interview is accomplished, but it seems likely since the cases are at about the same point.

At no time since the Hague slowdown and eventual shutdown three years ago, have adoption cases in Guatemala been so delayed overall. The difference between that situation and this one is that when Aimee and other parents were waiting during the Hague, there was no assurance whatsoever that their children would ever come home. At least at this point, that does not seem to be a concern with the PGN situation, ie it seems that the children will be coming home but on a timeline determined by PGN and not by parents, agencies or attorneys. I know that you had hoped to bring home a young infant and certainly before the PGN problem we had a solid history of bringing home 95% or more of our children in 4 months or less, often much less. All of this has been unpredictable and regrettably unavoidable but I know this does not make it any easier for any of us - parents, birth parents, attorneys, agency personnel - to bear.


Although our case is completely up in the air and unpredictable it can only be a best estimate that Micaiah will not be home before the fall. And at best, this is simply a best guess.