Semillas de Amor

I came to Guatemala 15 1/2 years ago to spend one year working with kids.  What I learned is that it is impossible to ignore the needs of the poor, especially  the children, here and so my short one year stay turned into a lifetime.
What I naively didn’t know was how brutal Guatemala and the government can be, from the ground up.  Yes, I did read all those books on the brutality of Guatemala, the civil war but unless you “live the life” it is very difficult, as a white middle class American woman, to really understand and feel first hand the needless suffering the people endure.

There has been a lot of news regarding the corruption of Guatemalan adoption, so the Hague Treaty was passed, and this closed all adoptions.  Those adoptions in process, about 700-900 kids, are in limbo. These kids were suppose to be grandfathered in and allowed to finish their adoptions.  The Hague was suppose to make things better, in a perfect world I would imagine so, but not in a world, like Guatemala that is not ready for first world laws.   So now children, many who have passports and visas to go home with their new adoptive families, sit in institutions and foster care while the Guatemalan government “tries” (”tries” generally has a dollar amount attached to it) to figure it all out.   Day after day, week after week, month after month and now year after year these kids wait.  Why do they wait?  The reality is they wait for no good reason.  These kids are being used as pawns in a political struggle.  The kids aren’t criminals.  If there is or has been corruption then those people need to be held accountable.  But I would encourage the Guatemalan government to look no further than their own front yard to see where that corruption is coming from.  As they point their finger at everyone else, especially those that are caring for the children that the government continues to hold hostage, they should see there are four more fingers pointing back at them.  We have dealt with the bullying of the Ministerio Publico (MP), the Procuraduria General de la Nacion (PGN) for years.   We have fought for the rights of our kids and all the while both the MP and PGN break law after law.   As I write this, I write cautiously out of fear that what I write will come back and harm me, my family or our program in some way.  This has happened before and I have been threatened.  Am I scared?  Yes, all the time.  Do I think someone will help the kids?  No.   At some point this 700-900 kids will go home but it will be at such a HUGE cost emotionally and financially to all of us involved.  When the kids do go home, the MP and PGN will continue to collect their salaries and will find one more innocent group of people to bully.  Heaven forbid that they should deal with the real problems in Guatemala; gang violence, murders, drug trafficking, no that would be too dangerous.  It is much easier to bully 700 little kids and keep them detained illegally as long as possible.

So where does that put Semillas de Amor?  This is a question I ask myself over and over again.  Do we continue to fight a dysfunctional, corrupt government system that does not care about their children’s rights.  The battle feels hopeless.

When I came to Guatemala, all I wanted to do was to provide love and safety to a few children.  I would have never guessed that caring for a few children would be so threatening to a government that has so many huge problems.  Just a few weeks ago one of the representatives from the PGN made this comment about me. “I don’t understand why Nancy Bailey hangs on so tight to these kids.  The other children’s homes are sending kid away because they don’t have money but Nancy Bailey won’t let us take her kids or will she give them up.  She must be getting money from somewhere for these kids.”  When I heard this statement I felt disbelief. But it summed up perfectly,  the mentality of a government that does not put the children’s rights firsts, where they use children as political pawns and believe that caring for a child is cramming an institution full of children and caring for their very basic needs, nothing more.

An interesting article regarding Guatemala’s legal system:
Guatemala: another democracy hangs in the balance:  Guatemala sees 17 murders per day that go unsolved. Democracy, Guatemalan-style, is imperiled as the president is accused of complicity in a political murder. Confidence in government declines, as does judicial probity.

Welcome to our beautiful garden filled with lettuces, broccoli, tomatoes, herbs, strawberries, sunflowers, carrots and radishes. Our tomatoes are carefully covered with a plastic green house or they won’t survive the rainy season. Everything else does well outside. We have planted many of our plants from seeds and some from starters we have purchased. We are all very excited about the tomato crop coming in. Our fruit trees were planted last year so they had at least one rainy season to take root and now have their second. We have fruit on all of our baby trees!!

Our future plans include a worm composting program for our fertilizer and a small green house to begin starting all of our new plants. The children will be included in all of what we do. They will really learn where their food comes from by planting a seed, watching it grow, picking the veggie, cooking it and then composting what is left over.

Last week, Gaby, Daisy and the four dogs and I, were driving home from the children’s village and I asked Gaby, my 13 year old daughter, born and raised in Guatemala (and very proud of it) what she had learned in school. Mornings she studies Spanish curriculum and afternoons and evenings English. Gaby told me about the three generations of human rights and the United Nations. As she went on about human rights, it all sounded very good to me. Then I asked her what country she was talking about. Gaby looked like I had slapped her, she said, with her head bowed down, “Guatemala”. I truly was surprised by the number of human rights in this country. I guess, I assumed, even after living here 15 years and all I have been through that there were no human rights. The truth is there are many. I asked Gaby if she thought about what her teacher was telling her, what she was reading and the reality of the life around her. She again looked sad. So I asked Gaby to write a piece about human rights in Guatemala. This is Gaby’s post, her feelings and her thoughts from a 13 year old Guatemalan teenager’s view.

The views of this post belong solely to the author, but I think what she has to say is right on.

Human Rights?! What a joke! ’cause I see none. Do you?

Blog by: Gabriela Bailey

June 18 of 2009
Dear Fellow and Loyal Readers.

Now, you must be wondering what I’m doing writing this instead of Nancy Bailey. No? Well then,you can scroll down instead and ignore me or go get a sandwich and listen to what I have to say. You have read what goes in Guatemala if read the blog or if you have adopted a child from Semillas de Amor. But do you really know what happens? Nancy Bailey has seen and experienced it all. What have I done or seen? I’ve seen violence, poverty break apart bit by bit the lives of children, animals and people. I’ve seen it kill the hope in our hearts. I’ve seen injustice pass before my eyes more than I can count in my life. You have read the battle between the Guatemala government and Nancy Bailey through her perspective. Now I will tell you my perspective from a 13 year old that has seen the suffering destroy the lives of others. I have lived my entire life in Guatemala and I have seen abuse and cruelty pass through it’s streets more than I want to remember. Some things make my heart ache and some make me want to scream at the top of my lungs with despair. I have seen animals in pain from cruelty. I have seen children abused and made to obey in fear. I have felt how this entire battle destroyed the hope in our hearts. I have seen how Nancy, Luvia and Gerson have been destroyed in the battle and I have seen more than one child try to hide their tears with a fake smile.
 What you may not know, though, is that Nancy Bailey was not kidding when she said that these children’s rights where being violated. In fact, all of them are being violated. The 20th of November, 1959 there was the Declaration of the Rights of Children. The United Nations declared this law, but I haven’t seen it in action. This document was meant to protect children and protect the objects that where going to protect them. Where did it go? The UN is “supposed” to make human rights become reality. To keep the peace and make sure there is protection in Guatemala. Work together for the solution of  economic, social and cultural problems. Coordinate hard work on the nations to reach the principals of peace, the well being and respect for human rights. The principal rights for children are: They have a right to food and a home. They have a right to a family and a right to an education. They have a right for a peaceful life. They are born free with no bonds holding them down. Now out of all these rights I have seen none being followed. Instead I have seen children hardened from the suffering of their human rights being abused. I have seen bleeding and crying animals. I have seen pain pass more then once across a face and I have seen more than one spirit torn to pieces and left to rot.

 You may not want to face the reality of life but get over it! Now get out of that chair of yours and think. Imagine. What if this was happening to your wife, your child, your sister or brother? What if your aunts and uncles were suffering and in agony? What if it was you? What if it was you in the torment and black hole of despair, depression, agony and anguish? You would be fighting for family members but what about us? Where is your heart and moral compass. Are you too selfish to get up and care about a child who is not just hurting but who is dying inside? Are you to busy to get up and bother about the world? If you are then I have seen your kind. I have seen people make promises and then not give a bother about us later. I have seen families take there children back to the United States and then not give a a second thought about us. I have seen people think they know what their doing, when in fact,they are going to end up lost in the big black forest of the Guatemalan government. Then I have seen the people who do care. Who bother to get up and fight. Such people as LSS and the Copper family. They are proud to stand up and I am grateful that they care. I am beyond joy when I have seen what they have done for these kids. I have seen people stand up and give the children more fun in there lives with the care and love they give them such as Rich and Pam Garman. The biggest advocate I know is Nancy Bailey. She is my hero and mother who can whip up the best apple pie in a couple of hours. Have a sense of doing the right thing and help her, she deserves it more then you know.

Now you may be wondering why I care. How is it that I care? Maybe Nancy Bailey just made me write this? No. I have taught myself to open up to the children and make them my little brothers and sisters. More then once they have called me mama by accident. I tell them if they want they can. Or they can call me big sis. Which ever they like best. I love these children more then I love myself. They are little brothers and sisters and I would do anything for them. Cut my arm off if I had to. Please, have a heart and take a second to care. Instead of sitting there and commenting about what a pity that these children are in despair,why don’t you try and help? But what do I know? Maybe you have something more important. I hope I have made my point and I am sorry if I ranted there for a bit. I just hate not being able to do anything to make adoptions possible again. I will have to settle for being the older sister of fifteen brothers and sisters. Oh well, I would ask for nothing more. Even if I want to tell them to get lost when they have just asked me the same question ten different times for the last ten minutes I will always love them and care. Help out and stand up, for the world would be a better place if you did.