Guatemala

Since 2003, Guatemala has been attempting to upgrade its controversial intercountry adoption system, which has operated under a cloud of suspicion in recent years. In 2005, the Department of State warned U.S. families against the wisdom of adopting from Guatemala. In late 2007, several countries suspended such adoptions until Guatemala ratifies international accords to bring itself into compliance with the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. Guatemala is gradually improving its performance as a source country, but not quickly enough for some of its critics. According to Rhiann Wynn-Nolet, the Inquiry Coordinator with MAPS Adoption and Humanitarian Aid:

Historically, [Guatemala] was appealing [for intercountry adoptions] because infants were available and were typically healthy, and the process was quick enough that babies could join their adoptive families at a younger age than with many other international programs…Guatemala in the past offered a relatively quick process (under a year at times).

The unregulated Guatemalan intercountry adoption process made it an ideal source country, as adoptive parents could add to their family expediently with children of an early age, and since younger children could be assimilated faster into their new family, and begin to relate to what was a novel culture more easily than might be the case with older children. The increasingly favorable outlook on using Guatemala as an originating country is visible in the number of immigrant visas issued to U.S.-adopted Guatemalan orphans between 2002 and 2006. In 2002, over 2400 visas were issued, and just four years later that number had increased by 170 percent to 4135.

• The runoff between Colom and Pérez Molina is this Sunday, November 4.
• Polls are indicating a dead-heat; although some show Pérez Molina to be slipping in the last hour. But to the fears of many human rights organizations he may decide to see to it that he is the victor, votes or not.
• The international community would like to see Colom triumph, because Pérez Molina brings too much dirty laundry to his candidacy.
• If Guatemala is to truly put its decades-old reputation as being the hemisphere's worst human rights violator behind it, and begin to deal with the pivotal issues of impunity and reconciliation, it would be wise to turn its back on Pérez Molina and vote for Colom.

Some food for thought, as noted by the BBC: "the 2006 murder rate (of 5,885) was higher than the average number of Guatemalans killed each year as a result of political violence from 1960 to 1996, when 200,000 died in a civil war between left-wing guerrillas and the military." This statistic hardly indicates that Guatemala's security situation can be readily ameliorated. Rather, these grim figures indicate that the breakdown in the security apparatus of the country continues 11 years after its weak and ineffective UN-brokered peace agreement came into effect. The divisive political atmosphere that currently permeates Guatemala is directly associated with the lawlessness and violence that currently exist in the country. On September 9, the two main candidates, Álvaro Colom and Otto Pérez Molina, received 27 percent and 25 percent of the vote, respectively; at the same time, as a result of political assassinations the body count reached almost 50, by conservative estimates, over the summer leading up to the elections. Although both national and international observers noted the relative calm, efficiency, and transparency of the elections, this does little to assuage mounting tension over the fact that a runoff is scheduled for November 4 with two candidates who are a hair-pin apart from one another in terms of their electoral prospects. Guatemala badly needs new leadership to rally around, not political divisiveness with a victorious candidate who may win only by the narrowest of margins or through attempted manipulation.