Hunger strike

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker Karla Koll has been keeping folks up to date about the hunger strike by three Guatemalan women (pictured above), outside of the Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice in Guatemala City.

One of these women, Norma Cruz (in the center), won U.S. government recognition this spring for her advocacy work for women in the Guatemalan judicial system. The other two, Olga Lopez (above left) and Raquel Par (above right), are women who say their children were kidnapped so that they could be turned over to U.S. families as part of the lucrative U.S.-Guatemalan adoption economy.

U.S. families have adopted thousands of Guatemalan children in recent years, at least some of these in dubious circumstances that involved third parties kidnapping Guatemalan children and then posing as the biological parents so that they could pass on the children to U.S. families as part of expensive private adoptions.

The three women ended their hunger strike late last month after Guatemalan authorities found Par’s daughter before she was adopted, charged two people for her kidnapping, and plowed ahead with court actions to have the adoptions of the other women’s child – and apparently other children – canceled.

No word yet on the location of the child of the third woman, Olga Lopez (also pictured below).

-- Perry