Guatemala: children adopted from civil war join forces

Coline, Marie-Laure and Pattie-Maëlle were all born in Guatemala and adopted in Europe. But the first two were stolen from their birth families, and the last one grew up with a false mother name on her record. To help people in a similar situation shed light on their history, they created the Lost Roots Foundation.

Helping adoptees born in Guatemala to reunite with their families: this is the main goal of Lost Roots. The foundation was created in early 2021, created by people themselves born in this small Latin American country and adopted in Europe.

Some of them were victims of child trafficking during the Guatemalan armed conflict (1960-1996). This is the case with Coline , born Mariela in Guatemala in 1986, and adopted in Belgium when she was eleven months old. When she becomes a mother, she begins a quest for her origins to answer her daughter's questions.

Many times in her life she had tried to find answers, without success. "There was no structure to do research, so it was a bit like wild research," she explains.

Child trafficking involving the ex-sister-in-law of dictator Oscar Mejia Victores

While searching the Internet, Coline notices the article by journalist Sebastián Escalón, which mentions a familiar name: Ofelia de Gamas. This woman's name also appears in her adoption record.

She contacts the journalist, who agrees to help her in her research. Thanks to him, she finds her biological mother's Facebook profile and sends him a message. For her mother, it was a shock: she thought her daughter was dead.

Two days after her birth, Coline was taken to pediatrics and medical staff told her birth mother that she was dead. In fact, she had been kidnapped as part of a vast trafficking in children.

At the heart of the affair, Ofelia de Gamas, the former sister-in-law of the then president, Oscar Mejia Victores. On Coline's file, it is indicated that she is the witness of her biological mother for the act of abandonment, a forgery.

It is Ofelia de Gamas herself who receives her future Belgian parents for adoption. The couple are then unaware that she was stolen from her family.

The name of Ofelia de Gamas appears in many files, including that of Marie-Laure, also adopted in Belgium. She always knew that her adoption record was irregular and that official data, like the names of her parents, was wrong. But during her childhood, her adoptive family told her a false story to explain this: "I was led to believe that my mother was very young, died in childbirth, and that I was the result of a war rape. Marie-Laure remembers. When you grow up with these images… you are not very well. "

In 2018, she heard about Coline's story. The young mother was back from Guatemala, where she had just met her biological family. Marie-Laure, who had already made an unsuccessful search a little earlier, decides to contact her on social networks.

Coline helps her in her investigation: she had just created Racines perdues as a collective, and in collaboration with an organization in Guatemala, Liga Guatemalteca de Higiene Mental, she is taking steps.

Thanks to this teamwork, Marie-Laure discovers her uncle's Facebook profile and gets in touch with him. She also learns that she was not born from rape. But the news he tells her afterwards is hard to take.

His biological parents are both deceased. As a baby, her wealthy family was targeted by criminals interested in her money. Several members were kidnapped and then murdered, including his mother, father and grandfather. The survivors decide to disperse in order to survive. Among them, his uncle, who fled to Mexico. Before their departure, they entrust Marie-Laure to her godmother. They learn too late that she was close to the famous Ofelia de Gamas.

On her return from Mexico, her uncle discovers that Marie-Laure is no longer with her godmother: she is in Belgium, where she has been adopted by a new family. "He went mad. For a fortnight, he insisted on being able to be received by Ofelia de Gamas. He ended up being welcomed in a very special way in his office. My godmother accompanied him… and they had had a telephone conversation with my family in Belgium. I discovered that maybe a month ago, it's quite recent. "

Marie-Laure's adoptive family decided to keep her, assuring her uncle that she would live better in Belgium.

Marie-Laure also discovers that the names on her file are those of her paternal grandparents. His uncle explains to him that these acts are surely false, because his grandmother had already fled the country and his grandfather was missing.

Today, Ofelia de Gamas is dead, according to official documents. But Marie-Laure recalls that the documents are easily falsified in Guatemala.

Thousands of children were reportedly stolen and sold during the armed conflict. Among them, at least a hundred were received by this woman, who was the point of contact for Hacer Puente. The association is now the subject of a judicial investigation led by the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office for trafficking in human beings. Marie-Laure is an alleged victim in this case, as well as Coline, who is also a civil party. His biological and adoptive parents are all four alleged victims.

Marie-Laure has decided to become involved in the Racines perdues foundation. She hopes that the accumulation of records can help adoptees disentangle the true from the false more easily.

A false name on a file: "I was told it was absolutely impossible"

Some people weren't kidnapped, but we were bought off nonetheless. This is for example the case of Pattie-Maëlle, adopted in France. Her biological mother consented to her adoption, but her file also contained false information: her mother's name was not the correct one.

Shortly before she turned 20, she decided to go to Guatemala with her adopted sister in order to discover the country of her origins. "We ran into a young couple who were absolutely wonderful with us, remembers Pattie-Maëlle. He helped me find my story. Put the pieces of the puzzle back together."

A long chain of solidarity follows: and barely a week later, a meeting with his biological mother is organized. "It was very moving because we really had a lot of people from the village who were around us. And then a reunion, worthy ... I don't know how to put it. Worthy of a film", remembers Pattie-Maëlle.

She tells him what happened. "She had had a first child at 14 and her own mother, my grandmother, was absolutely against it. And she threatened her. She said to her 'if you have another, I kill you and I kill you. the child. 'So she hid her second pregnancy, when she was 17, and she went to another town in the country. Then she came back and asked her friend to put me up for adoption. "

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After her return to France, Pattie-Maëlle asks for explanations from the association which allowed her adoption: "I did not understand how it could have been possible, such a thing, that we can put the name of a woman then that it is not her on files which were validated by the State and by the government in Guatemala, in France, and signed. They closed the door in my face, telling me that it was absolutely impossible. that no document had been falsified. But the facts are there. This woman is not my mother… What is even more disturbing is that at the time, I thought I had a half-sister in France, because we had the same mother on paper. So I thought I had a half-sister and once I arrived in the country, in Guatemala, II understood that the mother who was on the papers was indeed my half-sister's mother, but not mine. "

An artist, she is now preparing a stand-up on the theme of adoption , and is also part of the Lost Roots Foundation team.

The members of the collective work so far with their personal funds, but appeal for donations. Their job is to find families, in collaboration with the Liga Guatemalteca de Higiene Mental association in Guatemala, to offer moral support to those who have entrusted them with their case, to allow meetings between people of Guatemalan origin, and to present them with projects. artistic, culinary, linguistic, around the culture of Guatemala.

To move forward, the foundation is waiting for a gesture from the governments under which this trafficking took place. "Switzerland has just recognized the responsibility of the state and has apologized to the adopted people of Sri Lanka, says Coline. Holland has just done the same for a whole list of countries. I think it is also a request that must be made at the level of the French State and at the level of the Belgian State. Because today, the institutions are closing the door on us, denying what happened. But it happened. , we are living proof that it existed. Do not close the door on us because the papers can be erased, but we cannot be erased. "

An online petition has been launched to get the Belgian government to react.