May 2008 News

Madres que reclaman devolución de sus hijas siguen en huelga de hambre

Mothers Hold Hunger Strike to Demand the Return of their Kidnapped Children

Four Guatemalan mothers whose babies were kidnapped to be sold in foreign adoption are continuing a hunger strike in front of the National Palace of Culture. The women started the protest on April 28th.

Norma Cruz, director of the Survivors Foundation, which assist women victims of violence, stated that representatives of the National Council on Adoptions, and the federal Attorney General's office have expressed interest in assisting the families.

Nonetheless, Cruz lamented, we don't see real, concrete action, and the investigation has not brought-about any positive results.

The mothers have vowed to continue their protest until there are clear signs that authorities are taking these cases seriously.

Raquel Par, an indigenous woman of the Kakchiquel Mayan ethnic group, told of how on April 4, 2006, her daughter, Heidi Saraí Batz, was drugged and then kidnapped by a woman in the Villa Hermosa neighbor-hood on the south side of Gauatemala City.

Ana Escobar, another victim, related how on March 26, 2006 an armed man entered the shoe repair shop where she worked, attempted to rape her, locked her in a bathroom, and then kidnapped her 6-month-old daughter Esther Zulamitha.

Olga López, whose daughter Arlene Escarleth disappeared on November 27, 2006, and Loyda Rodríguez, mother of Angielyn Lisset Hernández, kidnapped on November 3, 2006, also discussed their tragedies.

According to Cruz, these are just four of the hundreds of cases in which young, poor and unprotected [and mostly indigenous] women become victims of organized criminal gangs whose business it is to rob children to sell to foreigners [mostly from the United States] in adoption.

Cruz: "We have denounced dozens of adoption lawyers. The authorities take this information, but they don't do much to stop these crimes."

In December of 2007, the Guatemalan Parliament adopted the Law of Adoptions, authored by the National Council on Adoptions, an organization representing diverse sectors of society.

Guatemala's government was pressured into enacting the law after the Hague Conference on Private International Law declared in July, 2007 that Guatemala was the number one source country in the world for children given in adoption, where the legality of these adoptions are not guaranteed.

- Actualidad - Terra

Spain

May 5, 2008

Paraguay

Niños indígenas fueron abandonados en Luque

Indigenous children live abandoned on the street

Approximately 30 indigenous children from the community of Caaguazú live on the streets of the capitol city of Asunción because, they say, there is no food to eat in their community. The children told of hold the community has no more land, and nobody is buying what their parents make for sale.

The children pass the day sniffing glue and begging on the streets. They flee when the National Indigenous Institute (INDI) picks them up, because they feel that they are not treated right by INDI staff.

Attorney Myriam Antonia Mora de Cáceres, of the local Center for Child and Adolescent Counseling states that when she brings the children clothing and checks up on them, they express fear of being taken back to INDI.

- abc.com.py

May 2, 2008

LibertadLatina note:

Indigenous peoples in Paraguay faced an active genocide until the 1970's, where entire villages were hunted down, the adults were murdered and the 12 to 14-year-old girls were raped and sold into sexual slavery. 

The above article appears to indicate that, as has happened across the Americas, the last land base has been stolen from this tribal group, leaving adults with no means to support themselves, and children with no food to eat.

Similar battles for land are taking place today with the Mapuche tribe in Chile, and with tribal groups in Colombia, who's land is stolen with impunity because they are made vulnerable by socially accepted racism against them, that justifies all manner of acts of impunity.

We will do our best to investigate this case further and report back to our readers.

Nicaragua

Niña obligada a prostituirse

An Underage Girl is Kidnapped into Forced Prostitution

Police are investig-ating the case of a 16-year-old girl from Somoto, who was offered work in Guatemala and ended-up enslaved in a brothel.

Rosa Díaz Martínez filed a criminal complaint stating that 18 days ago, a local human trafficker and taxi driver, Luis Alfonso Benavides, from San Lucas, had taken her daughter to the Guatemalan border, where he paid a bribe to border agents to allow the minor to pass into Guatemala.

The girl, who had been offered a good job, was picked-up on the other side of the border by her supposed new Guatemalan employer, who took her to San Luis.

Díaz Martínez: "This man promised my daughter a job. But she was able to call me from Guatemala, and told me that she was being held against her will in a brothel together with other girls, some of whom were also from Somoto, Nicaragua."

During the phone call, the girl told her mother that the taxi driver told her during the trip that he would return her to Nicaragua, but only after her family had paid him $1,800.

Díaz Martínez: "I am afraid that something bad will happen to my daughter, because I have come to find out that this trafficker is a very dangerous man, who tricks many young girls by offering them good jobs, and then sells them into prostitution." Díaz Martínez has also learned that this trafficker is protected by police in Guatemala.

During an interview with La Prensa, the taxi driver Benavides denied having taken the girl to Guatemala. He states that Antonio Díaz, a businessman from