Wings of a Bird

Guatemala System Is Scrutinized as Americans Rush In to Adopt - N.Y. Times
... Most babies that find their way to America are conceived in the countryside. Some of the birth mothers have brought shame on the family by becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Others are married but had affairs after their husbands emigrated to the United States. Inevitably, the pregnancies were not planned.
Poverty is a way of life in these villages, and infant mortality, at 36 per 1,000 births in 2002, is among the highest in the hemisphere.
Those children who survive have a rough start, with almost half of them chronically malnourished. Guatemala’s adoption system is run not by judges, courts and bureaucrats — as in most other nations — but by some 500 private lawyers and notaries, who hire baby brokers and maintain networks of pediatricians and foster mothers to tend children awaiting adoption.
...
“Babies are being sold, and we have to stop it,” she said. “What’s happening to our culture that we don’t take care of our children?”
...
Baby brokers tread carefully as they seek pregnant women in the countryside, where many villagers believe what is apparently a rural myth that there is an active market overseas for children as organ donors.
A few months back, in a village outside the provincial town of Nahuala, two women and a man went house to house selling baby slings, pieces of cloth used to carry infants across the back. It was a ruse, neighbors recounted, to find out who would give birth soon.
In early October, villagers in Ixtahuacán killed one person with machetes, captured another 12 and set fire to five cars when fear spread that a gang of child snatchers was in the area. The police said it remained unclear whether the outsiders had actually been looking for children.
...