In this The Guardian Long Read article, Rachel Nolan explores the history of international adoptions from Guatemala in Central America.

She writes that there are an estimated 40,000 adoptees from Guatemala now living in Canada, Europe & the USA. The adoptions happened in 2 waves: “from the late 1960s to the early 1980s”.

Rachel Nolan says:

“I have spent the last decade researching the adoption industry in Guatemala from 1968 until its closure in 2008. Many records I read, of private adoptions and those through state orphanages, contained a signature from the birth mother in the form of a thumbprint – indicating that she was illiterate.”

From the 1990s there was a panic about international adoptions in Guatemala and the practice has now been illegal for 15 years or so. However, “fears about child snatchers persist.”