GuatemalaCity - Children have become a booming business in Guatemala. They are given up for adoption, sold abroad, forced to engage in prostitution, mistreated or killed. Sometimes bodies of minors are found from which internal organs have previously been removed.
In Guatemala, a baby costs up to 40,000 dollars. Between 1997 and August 2007, 29,411 Guatemalan children were adopted - but only 842 by Guatemalan parents.
In 2006 alone, 4,918 adoptions produced revenue of 200 million dollars. The money goes mostly to corrupt officials, illegal baby traffickers, lawyers, doctors and other medical personnel.
However, demand is still greater than supply. Some small children are stolen, and young girls are made pregnant for new "production."
Hector Dionisio of the children's advocacy organization Casa Alianza in Guatemala City describe one 16-year-old who has already gone through three pregnancies starting when she was 12.
"It was the stepfather, who abused the girl as a child factory," he said.
It was not an isolated incident.
Officially, it is extraordinarily difficult to adopt a child in Guatemala.
"It is difficult to give a child up for adoption without the agreement of the parents," said Jorge Meng, spokesman for the Guatemalan attorney general's office.
And it is going to get even harder, with legislation meant to halt the reported abuses taking effect in January.
But reality is widely described as different from the legal doctrine that the state must protect the safety and health of children.
In the first six months of 2007, 216 babies and young children were stolen from their families in Guatemala, according to an investigation by Casa Alianza. Barely a day goes by without at least one child being reported missing.
Newspapers regularly print appeals from the Guatemalan attorney general's office with photos of babies, whose parents are asked to reconsider their actions. If no parents exert a claim, the child is given up for adoption.
"This is a terrible thing, because Guatemala lacks appropriate legislation," said Claudia Rivera, director of Casa Alianza.
Casa Alianza's building in Guatemala City currently houses 75 boys, 50 girls and 15 mothers with babies.
Rivera recalled the most recent case kidnapping. In broad daylight, 9-month-old Honey Briseida was stolen from her pram opposite Cementos Progreso stadium in Guatemala City. The child has not been seen again.
In other cases, newborns have been snatched at birth from their mothers, who were falsely told that the child had died in delivery. In October, the Guatemalan attorney general's office carried out investigations at Roosevelt Hospital in the capital, country's most prestigious hospital.
In some cases, parents were given the body not of their child but another newborn. After burial, the bodies were allegedly stolen from the graves, apparently to remove evidence. Illegal adoption schemes appeared to be behind these cases, according to the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre.
"Traffic in organs is also not being ruled out," the paper reported.
Few cases of adoption crime have been prosecuted, and victimized families have little recourse to find their children. Several suspected child snatchers have been lynched in rural areas of Guatemala.
Trafficking in children has in recent years reached a worrying dimension across the region, from Mexico to Panama, but particularly in Guatemala.
Some 98 per cent of Guatemalan adoptions see children granted to parents in the United States.
"Money has turned an actually noble issue into a business in which children become merchandise," said Dionisio. "Children are supplied to order."
Even more horrifying, adoption is not the only motive behind child trafficking.
This year's killing of 9-year-old Alba Mishel Espana Dias has attracted particular attention. One day in June, the girl left home for a bookstore but never arrived. Her body was found the next day, missing several organs.
