I was a stolen child, I am 46 years old and I want to recover my Guatemalan identity
We are in the year 2000 or 2001, I don't remember well. The legal team of the association for which I work in Guatemala City, Casa Alianza, handles cases of children stolen and given up for illegal adoption during the eighties and nineties. Guatemala has become a country that exports girls and boys and the network of illegal adoptions that destroys families and snatches babies from mothers in vulnerable situations is in full swing. I am sent to support a journalist from National Geographic magazine who is investigating the issue. After seeing white couples carrying babies from Guatemala in the lobby of the Camino Real hotel, the NatGeo journalist and I headed to a home in the historic center of the city run by Orthodox nuns. It seems there are babies there to give up for adoption, we want to investigate. I had never seen Orthodox nuns in Guatemala. The nun who takes us from one home to another is afraid of the street and she accompanies us with an armed man. I'm walking in line, in zone 1, with an Orthodox nun and her imposing black headdress on top of her head, her leading the way, I think I'm a second in Greece or Russia. The American journalist, blonder than the sun, walks behind her; Then me, looking like a foreigner too, and bringing up the rear with an armed man. The situation borders on the ridiculous, ubuesque and painful, similar to everything that will be investigated. I, who walk very often in zone 1, make myself uncomfortable having a man with a machine gun escorting me.
That childhood torn from their families in those years is now 30, 40 or 45 years old. We are in 2023 and I know Javier on Facebook. A Frenchman born in Guatemala in 1977, stolen from his mother in zone 18 in 1980 and adopted by a European couple.
On October 11, 2023, the day of his 46th birthday, Javier – a pseudonym he chose for security reasons –, after a report he filed for having been robbed in his childhood, is in his native country, Guatemala. It is his first time in Guatemala since he was robbed. In January 2024, Javier returned to Guatemala, I wanted to meet him in person, as well as his story, and I invited him to have breakfast at my house. I am moved by his questions: «So this little package that says “Ducal”, are beans?», «But beans are also eaten in another way, right?» It makes me a little sad that the new Guatemalan doesn't see beans cooking in the pot, but rather packaged beans. But I told him about the difference between strained beans and standing beans. “And when is mango season?” he asks. Then he tells me, very happy, that he took Guatemalan cooking classes and that he already made his first pepián.
Javier tells me about his two different identities and I get a little lost there, but he explains: «I have two identification documents, a French one and a Guatemalan one, with different last names. Precisely because I am one of the stolen children of Guatemala. It's not just having several different surnames, it's having two very different identities, each with its own nationality. In 1980, my brother and I were stolen from my mother through a Casa Canada home, now Casa Guatemala, making us believe that we were so sick that only a stay in a hospital in the United States could cure us. This subterfuge took us out of the country, and in reality they took us to France. "We have never been to the United States and in France they have never treated us for a serious illness."
There was actually no adoption order in Guatemala because I was robbed, so there is no trace of a long-term adoption visa.
«In 1981, France issued a ruling of “full adoption” intended to create a new fictitious identity in which the adopters became the “biological parents.” It must be understood that, technically, for France to carry out a full adoption in accordance with the rules, it must first be based on an adoption ruling issued in the country of origin, with the procedure to obtain a long-term adoption visa. duration to be able to reach French soil.
What Javier explains to me there is that finally both France and Guatemala legally endorsed the theft of two children.
«Actually there was no adoption order in Guatemala because they robbed me, so there is no trace of a long-term adoption visa because the documents that my mother signed were only to leave Guatemalan territory and return to her. That's why I never lost my original identity and now I have a double identity," she tells me. Javier actually found his birth certificate at Renap.
«My objective is to obtain the greatest possible number of facts and arguments to justify my presence in France as a Guatemalan, with my true identity. At the same time, for example, I have managed to open a bank account in France with my true identity, just as I have created the association with my true identity.
The association Javier refers to is: www.associationiam.org
Javier insists on his true identity: «I have already earned some money in France with my original identity, and the opening of my virtual company is also with the objective of being able to bill for services in France. But this is not a game, it is a kind of chess match in which I have to plan several moves in advance to prevent France from once again normalizing the human trafficking of which I continue to be a victim and to ensure that only my identity original is viable without either of the two identities merging. Given the lack of will to challenge the French illegal adoption ruling, I am creating a situation that will set a precedent, not only for me, but for all other victims who want to recover their true identity and life.
At our breakfast of packaged beans, Javier tells me that he wants to arrange a meeting with an advisor close to the new President Arévalo to put the issue on the table of reparation or support in the search for identity of origin. He insists that preserving the identity of an adopted person normalizes the kidnapping of children by a justice entity.
Javier wants to make up for lost time and get to know Guatemala. Our meeting ends with these words: «I feel at home in the land of eternal spring. And I am glad to know that I now have the opportunity to contradict the idea that, if they had not adopted me, I would have died in Guatemala. "I am both happy and sad to know that I am alive, even though I have lost a large part of my Guatemalan history."