“Both Ends Burning” and baking cakes

April 7th, 2011

For months I have been vaguely aware of the pro-international adoption organization, Both Ends Burning, whose subheading is “a global initiative to transform the process of international adoption.” The movement’s founder, Craig Juntunen, and his wife, Kathi, are adoptive parents to three children from Haiti. Juntunen has published a book, Both Ends Burning: My Story of Adopting Three Children from Haiti (Outskirts Press, 2009), and is producing a film, Wrongfully Detained, scheduled for release in September 2011.

I haven’t read the book and know little about the organization beyond the information on its website. But today I came across this  ABC15.com interview with Craig Juntunen, Valley group aims to make international adoption easier, and was able to listen to and watch Juntunen discuss the subject himself. The clip contains footage from what appears to be orphanages around the world, as well as a delightful singing performance by Juntunen’s son. Many of Juntunen’s views on international adoption mirror my own, including his belief that children everywhere deserve a nurturing, permanent home. However, I believe that government bureaucracy and shutdowns–current or threatened–and not expense or length of time, are the prime deterrents to international adoption. (Expense and length of time are folded into the bureaucracy, in fact.) More people might consider adopting internationally if they weren’t so afraid of the process.  And that, of course, requires careful collaboration and negotiation between countries to create a system that is transparent and fair to all, which is another extremely complicated subject.

But anything that raises awareness of international adoption deserves to be shared. Please watch and see what you think.

On a different and related subject: To cover the costs of adopting her then-14-month-old daughter, born in China with a cleft lip and palate, Kateri Lambrose baked cakes. Hundreds of them.  I’m posting the link to Cakes create a miracle not only because it includes the recipe for “Kateri’s Chocolate Candy Bar Cake,” but also because I was so moved by Kateri’s story. I’ll end with her words:

 “You go into this thinking you’re going to bless this child, and give them a family they deserve. In reality, it’s the opposite. She has blessed our family so much… I cannot imagine our lives without her. It’s incomprehensible.”

I know what she means.

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Update on Emily Ruiz, 4-year-old US citizen deported to Guatemala

April 5th, 2011

Remember my March 22, 2011 blog post about Emily Ruiz? She is the four-year-old girl born in the United States to parents from Guatemala who are undocumented. Emily visited Guatemala with her grandfather, who possessed a valid temporary visa. When they tried to re-enter the U.S., the grandfather was found to have an immigration violation dating from the mid-1990s. After a series of events, officials from Customs and Border Protection put Emily on an airplane and returned her to Guatemala.

I’m happy to report that Emily is back in the United States. As a U.S. citizen, that is her right. 

Read the complete story and its outcome in the New York Times, in 4-Year-Old Citizen Who Was Deported Comes Back, by Tim Stelloh, and the most recent developments in an article written by the Ruiz family’s attorney, David Sperling, For Little Emily, the Story Has Not Yet Ended, on the Huffington Post. The comments in the Huffington Post article reveal readers’ strong opinions on the subject of immigration.

I wonder how decision-makers living in Guatemala feel about this incident?

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Whose story is it? AP article on adopting HIV-positive children

April 4th, 2011

During the five years I wrote Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, I grappled daily with the question of how much of the story I was entitled to tell. After all, the book’s subject is the adoption of my daughter, Olivia, from Guatemala. Ultimately, I decided the story belonged to me, too, at least partially. As long as I kept the narrative from my point of view, I believed her privacy would be maintained. Foremost in my mind was the question, “When my daughter’s in high school, will she be okay reading this?” I can say with confidence that I believe she will.

That said, I also wanted to write the truth of intercountry adoption as I experienced it. A baby strapped in a stroller in front of a television set or kicking me away because I was her fourth mother-figure aren’t the ideal visuals to communicate, but that was what happened. Change can never be made if no one talks about reality, including the impact on children of prolonged foster or institutional care, or multiple caregiver placements.

I was reminded of the struggle between privacy and truth-telling as I read this Associated Press article by David Crary, More families adopting HIV-positive children. One of the children discussed was born in Guatemala. Do parents have the right to reveal their minor children’s HIV-positive status via an Associated Press article? Although there is absolutely nothing shameful about the disease, it might not be information a person necessarily wishes to share with the world at large.

I don’t know the answer, but my guess is that, like me, the parents in question hoped to normalize their family’s situation by being honest about it. Time will tell if our children feel the same.

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Guatemalan First Couple’s divorce on hold; judge receives death threat to her family

April 3rd, 2011

A Guatemalan court has stopped divorce proceedings by First Lady Sandra Torres from her her husband, President Alvaro Colom, the BBC News reported on April 2, 2011. The judge ruling in the case received an anonymous death threat against a family member if she granted the divorce. Especially in light of the New Yorker article about Rodrigo Rosenberg, this outcome seems, tragically, not impossible.

First Lady Sandra Torres said last week she was seeking to divorce President Alvaro Colom, so she could stand for election to succeed him.

Guatemala’s constitution bans close relatives of the president from running for the top office.

A group of students had petitioned the court to stop the divorce, which they said would bypass the constitution.

The students called the move by the first couple a farce.

 ***

The main opposition candidate for the presidential election in September, former general Otto Perez Molina, called it electoral fraud.

A spokesperson for the court said the couple’s divorce proceedings would be on hold until a final decision was reached on whether the petition brought by the students would be allowed to proceed.

On Friday, the judge hearing the first couple’s divorce case said she had received anonymous threats warning her not to grant the divorce.

Judge Mildred Roca said she had received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as belonging to a “group defending the constitution” and warning her that if she granted the divorce a member of her family would be executed.

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New Yorker article on the death of Rodrigo Rosenberg

April 2nd, 2011

This week’s issue of The New Yorker (April 4, 2011) contains a riveting article about the death of Guatemalan attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg that should be read by anyone interested in the country or adoption. A Murder Foretold: Unravelling the Ultimate Political Conspiracy by David Grann begins this way:

Rodrigo Rosenberg knew that he was about to die. It wasn’t because he was approaching old age—he was only forty-eight. Nor had he been diagnosed with a fatal illness; an avid bike rider, he was in perfect health. Rather, Rosenberg, a highly respected corporate attorney in Guatemala, was certain that he was going to be assassinated.

Not only is Rosenberg’s death a tragedy, it occurred under circumstances so tangled and unbelievable, you must must read the entire article to appreciate its impact. The more people understand why a man would be driven to do what Rosenberg did, perhaps the more they will care about Guatemala, and the less Rosenberg’s death will have been in vain. For purposes of this blog, which deals with adoption, I will focus on a few early paragraphs, because they lay out the context in which adoption to the United States occurred:

Rosenberg had frequently expressed despair over the violence that consumed Guatemala. In 2007, a joint study by the United Nations and the World Bank ranked it as the third most murderous country. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of killings rose steadily, ultimately reaching sixty-four hundred. The murder rate was nearly four times higher than Mexico’s. In 2009, fewer civilians were reported killed in the war zone of Iraq than were shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in Guatemala.

The violence can be traced to a civil war between the state and leftist rebels, a three-decade struggle that, from 1960 to 1996, was the dirtiest of Latin America’s dirty wars. More than two hundred thousand people were killed or “disappeared.” According to a U.N.-sponsored commission, at least ninety per cent of the killings were carried out by the state’s military forces or by paramilitary death squads with names like Eye for an Eye.

***

In 1996, the government reached a peace accord with the rebels, and it was supposed to mark a new era of democracy and rule of law. But amnesty was granted for even the worst crimes, leaving no one accountable. 

***

After the peace accord, the state’s security apparatus—death squads, intelligence units, police officers, military counter-insurgency forces—did not disappear but, rather, mutated into criminal organizations. Amounting to a parallel state, these illicit networks engage in arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion, human smuggling, black-market adoptions, and kidnapping for ransom. The networks also control an exploding drug trade. Latin America’s cartels, squeezed by the governments of Colombia and Mexico, have found an ideal sanctuary in Guatemala, and most of the cocaine entering America now passes through the country. Criminal networks have infiltrated virtually every government and law-enforcement agency, and more than half the country is no longer believed to be under the control of any government at all. Citizens, deprived of justice, often form lynch mobs, or they resolve disputes, even trivial ones, by hiring assassins.

I personally would like to know what author David Grann means by “black-market adoptions.” Use of an alias on paperwork? Change of a birth date? The omission of the name of a husband when one existed? None of those things are “right,” but they are a far cry from baby-snatching, which is what “black-market adoptions” implies, at least to me.  Perhaps Grann simply is saying that adoption was handled in a manner he observed often in Guatemala. As my lawyer once told me during my daughter’s adoption, “Things are different here.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011

/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann#ixzz1IN5OtDYa

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Conference call on Guatemalan adoption, 3/31/11

March 31st, 2011

I just hung up the phone from the U.S. State Department conference call on the status of Guatemalan adoption and I’m in awe of the composure of the other people who were on the line. Not the State Department employees, who are doing their best and are trained to remain composed. But the parents who have been waiting for their children for more than three years–the group known as the Guatemala900. How did those mothers and fathers not shriek with outraged fury–My child is growing up in an orphanage without me! My kid needs a loving family! Does anyone care about the fate of our children?

I’m afraid that’s what I might have done.

The first thing we were told was that the call was “off-the-record” for journalists. I doubt anyone considers my blog “journalism,” but in case they do, I’ll respect that caveat. Besides, there is little new to report since the 12/21/10 conference call. Guatemalan working groups continue to review cases. The universe of cases seems to remain around 385. The ones in PGN are staying in PGN; the ones in CNA aren’t moving from there, either. The pace is still slow. Excruciatingly so. Six cases per week, on average. At that rate, we’re looking at another year and a half to two years, minimum, for large-scale resolution.

I understand how important it is to remain positive. But the more I read articles, books, and other blogs about international adoption, the more I realize that emotion, and not reason, often seems to drive the decision-making process.  Take adoption from Ethiopia. Recently, the government there announced that due to “irregularities”–real or perceived–only five cases a day would be processed. A spate of blog posts followed, pro and con, including an excellent overview at Creating a Family. In the Comments section, “abiye” wrote this: 

“Most Ethiopians are not happy in what’s going on in the Adoption dram[a]. Ethiopians, particularly in Addis Ababa, get angry seeing white people coming into their country and leave with a child – as if that child is a pet. This is/was a talk of the town for last few years & the government knows it that at any time the anger can reach a boiling point.”

I posted in response: 

“As an adoptive mother to two children from Guatemala, I admit there are problems in the system that must be fixed. However… From my observation, some of the controversy around international adoption stems from th[e] anger [abiye describes]. If that’s the case, perhaps no level of reform will ever be perceived as satisfactory.” 

In a February 17  blog post, I wrote about the Kyrgyzstan 65, a group of adoptive parents in the U.S. whose pending adoptions have been hung up for years.  Yesterday, March 30, an article titled Bishkek Lawmakers Reluctant to Lift International Adoption Freeze appeared on Eurasianet.org.  

In 2008, responding to local rumors that foreigners were adopting babies to harvest their organs, the Kyrgyz government imposed a moratorium on international adoptions. Since then, American families… have been waiting to bring home 65 children whose adoptions were in progress when the freeze was announced. According to the Ministry of Social Protection, 30 of the 65 orphans have special health conditions and need regular treatment that is difficult to find in Kyrgyzstan. Two have died. Families in Kyrgyzstan have adopted only four.

Could it be that, around the world, unreasonable delays are happening because, bottom line, some people really don’t want these adoptions to be resolved? That, for reasons of their own, a nation would prefer their children live in orphanages than go to the United States? Recently, I was asked to participate on a panel about adoption from Guatemala. In preparation, the question arose about domestic adoption in Guatemala–that is, Guatemalan families adopting children who are not blood relations. How many such adoptions have occurred, now that adoptions are closed to outsiders? If an answer exists, none of us could find it, including a Guatemalan national with close ties to adoption. “Domestic adoption first” is held up as a solution, the better way to provide permanent families for children who need them. Wonderful. But in the three years since the December 2007 shutdown, few, if any, families in Guatemala have stepped up to adopt orphans.

Meanwhile, the families on the phone line today continue to wait.

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A new baby

March 30th, 2011

Most days, Mateo takes the bus to kindergarten, but sometimes we drive so we can read together in the classroom for 15 minutes before school begins. I chat with the other mothers on the playground as we watch our kids jump and run, their little bodies radiating energy and happiness. At the sound of the bell, the teacher, Ms. S, emerges from the classroom and the kids fall into an orderly line. Ms. S has been teaching kindergarten for more than 20 years. She knows how to set a tone.

This morning, the excitement is especially high. Ms. S’s oldest daughter, a married woman who lives back East, is pregnant, due to deliver any minute. I know this because all week Mateo has been telling me, “Ms. S is about to become a grandma!”

As the kids file into the classroom and Ms. S is telling us about her daughter’s long and seemingly endless labor, her cell phone rings. “Oh, oh, oh!” Ms. S spins in a circle as she flips open her phone. “It might be news!”

Another false alarm.

Inside the classroom, I settle into a miniature-sized plastic chair and Mateo goes over to his cubby to pull out his book box. Then he does something he has never done when I come to the classroom to read. He crawls into my lap and snuggles. He wants to be held.

Chatter about babies swirls around the classroom–“During my first pregnancy…” “She was ten pounds eleven ounces!,” “And then the doctor said twins,”–and I remember the arrival of my nieces and nephews. For a few stunning moments, the world stopped: It’s a girl! It’s a boy! He’s got the same eyes-hair-chin-nose. She’s gorgeous!

As I hug Mateo, and he clings to me, I wonder about his birth. Mateo is from Guatemala, and one of the few facts I know about his life is that before he was born, his biological mother made her decision to give him up. I imagine that in order to separate, she had to distance herself from her son. No calls to a grandma waiting on the other end of a cell phone. No announcements sent to aunties and uncles and far-flung kin. Did Mateo’s mother count his fingers and toes?

I reach into my pocketbook for my glasses and blink away a few sharp tears. Through some miracle, Mateo found his way to me and my husband, to his sister, Olivia; to our family.  Forever, I am Mateo’s mother and he is my son. But today I’m reminded, again, that like all children who are adopted, Mateo has a story that started before I met him. His prologue is one I may never know.

When Mateo was born, did anyone celebrate? Please tell me yes.

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NY Times article, Trekking in Guatemala

March 28th, 2011

No sooner did I post The Economist article about Guatemala’s hope to promote “rural tourism” than another, related article appeared in the Sunday, March 27 edition of  The New York Times. Guatemala By Hiking Boots, Not Tour Bus, written by Mark Sundeen, is a feel-good, glowing account of a three-day hike from Quetzaltenango to Lake Atitlan.

My reaction to the article surprised me. I’m a little offended by it.

For example, this paragraph:

Our accommodations were a municipal building, a cinder block structure around a courtyard with a fountain that didn’t work and an ash heap where skinny mutts gnawed leftovers. We were to sleep on the tile floor of a room with no furniture and a nonfunctioning light bulb hanging from a wire. I recognized the place from Hollywood thrillers: this was where the narco-cartel tortured its enemies.

I’m often accused of being overly-sensitive, but I don’t find jokes about narco-cartels funny. Especially narco-cartels in Guatemala.  This paragraph also offended me:

Remember when Guatemala was the world’s coolest destination, when your dorm-mates returned from winter break bedecked in purple ponchos for which they’d bargained— in Spanish! — from some actual Maya on market day in Chichicastenango? As decades of civil war calmed enough to allow tourism, your friends reported hair-raising rides aboard rickety chicken buses, those Blue Birds pimped like low-riders with flashing lights, naked-lady mud flaps, and Jesus and the Virgin airbrushed on the hood.

I object to the phase “some actual Maya,” because it treats a group of human beings as though they are specimens or a sideshow.  I also don’t agree with the writer’s description of  chicken buses as “Blue Birds pimped like low-riders… with…Jesus and the Virgin airbrushed on the hood,” (although I understand his intention). The Guatemalans I know are respectful people, very sincere in their religious beliefs. So while a bus may be painted with the word “Jesus,”  feature an outline of Guadalupe, and even be festooned with balloons, that’s a far cry from anything close to “pimp my ride.” And after “decades of civil war,” the country has “calmed” down, really?

Maybe I’m just jealous because Mark Sundeen got to hike across Guatemala, and I didn’t.

In any case, it’s always a good day when the esteemed New York Times runs a positive article about Guatemala. As Mr. Sundeen writes, “Remember when Guatemala was the world’s coolest destination?” No argument there. Still is.

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State Department conference call on pending adoption cases

March 25th, 2011

Maybe we will get some answers on the pending adoption cases known as the Guatemala900 during the State Department’s upcoming conference call on Thursday, March 31 from 10 – 11 a.m. Eastern time.  If past calls are an indication, the conversation should be frank and informative. Here is the State Department’s announcement:

Teleconference on Guatemala Adoptions

Thursday March 31, 2011 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am (EDT)

The U.S. Department of State Office of Children’s Issues Adoptions Division would like to invite prospective adoptive parents, adoption service providers, and adoption stakeholders with an interest in Guatemala adoptions to a teleconference with the Office of Children’s issues and the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to discuss the status of intercountry adoption processing in Guatemala.

The focus of the call will be primarily to provide an updated outlook for resolution of the remaining “grandfathered” adoption cases involving U.S. citizens.   This update will include information from a recent trip to Guatemala during which USCIS and the Office of Children’s Issues met with Guatemalan government officials for updates on the status of “grandfathered” adoption cases still pending in Guatemala.

Please join us for this call to learn more about adoption processing in Guatemala.

To Join the Call

If you are calling from within the United States, please dial: 1-888-363-4749

If you are calling from outside the United States, please dial: +1-215-446-3662

The passcode for all callers is: 6276702

 

 

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Politics, rural tourism, micro-loans in Guatemala

March 25th, 2011

This article in The Economist, Guatemala’s First Couple: Divide and Rule, gives the best general overview written in English about the divorce of Guatemala’s presidential couple, Alvaro Colom and Sandra Torres, that I’ve read so far. In reads in part:

Ms Torres is not the only candidate running on dubious constitutional grounds. Álvaro Arzú, a former president, is campaigning despite a ban on re-election. Zury Ríos, a congresswoman, may be blocked by a prohibition on the relatives of the organisers of coups, since her father, Efraín Ríos Montt, toppled a government in 1982 and installed himself as dictator.

***

One of the few candidates free of constitutional entanglements is Otto Pérez Molina, a former general who narrowly lost a run-off vote to Mr Colom in 2007. Mr Pérez Molina is the strong favourite: a recent poll put his support at 43%, with Ms Torres next on only 11%. In 2007 he promised an “iron fist” against crime. Since then Guatemala has become far more dangerous, as Mexican cocaine smugglers have put down roots in the wild jungle areas near the northern border. After four years of the soft-spoken Mr Colom, some Guatemalans might fancy an ex-army man to drive the gunmen back across the frontier.

Guatemala has been challenged with political and social instability throughout its history, including during  the years since the 36-year civil war ended in 1996. That instability has far-reaching implications. Tourism, for example. Danilo Valladares reports in Alternative Tourism Seeks to Overcome Major Obstacles.

GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 24, 2011 (IPS) – Most of the countries of Central America are lagging behind the rest of the tourist destinations in Latin America, despite their impressive natural and archaeological treasures. To turn this situation around, the area is increasingly focusing on alternatives like rural tourism.

“Tourism has become the main livelihood of families here,” Olga Cholotío of the Rupalaj K’istalin community association of eco-tourism guides in San Juan La Laguna in the northwestern Guatemalan province of Sololá, told IPS.

The association, run by the Mayan Tzutuhil indigenous people, works in the area around Lake Atitlán, one of the region’s main tourist attractions, offering tours of rural areas and villages where visitors see traditional weavers making colourful textiles, watch small-scale fishers plying their trade, take in traditional music and dance performances, and go on nature walks.

***

The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, produced every year since 2007 except 2010, seeks to measure the factors and policies making countries attractive for developing the travel and tourism industry. The index includes three main subcategories: regulatory framework; business environment and infrastructure; and human, cultural, and natural resources.

Cholotío is not familiar with the report. But she has no doubt that Guatemala’s high crime rates have a negative impact on tourism and keep it from fully becoming an engine of development for communities like hers.

In 2010, revenues from tourism, the country’s third-largest source of foreign exchange, fell 14.5 percent from 2009, to just under 986 million dollars, according to Guatemala’s central bank.

The first question I’m asked when I talk about our travels to Guatemala is “Is it safe?” My answer is that it is, as long as you’re careful. My personal preference is to avoid Guatemala City, but I may be more cautious than most. We plan our trips thoughtfully and make arrangements in advance. Our family loves the villages around Lake Atitlán. Like many other adoptive families, we try to visit as much as we can. I hope that the region’s plans to boost rural tourism succeeds.

Finally, a friend posted this link to a video on the Kiva website made by a Bay Area family who made a micro-loan to three women in Guatemala to help fund their clothing enterprise. You’ll enjoy watching a recap of the family’s trip to Guatemala, where they met the three women whose business they helped finance.

Happy Friday!

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