I don't want your children.

Guatemala is the second largest source of foreign adoption for the United States, recently surpassing Russia and trailing behind only China. However with a population 1/100 of that of China (over 1.3 billion to less than 13 million), Guatemala has by far the highest foreign adoption per capita rate in the world. Americans adopted 4,135 Guatemalan babies last year, a shocking 1 out of every 100 babies born here. You can’t spend a day in Antigua without seeing at least a dozen adoptive mothers toting around their new babies in back slings or bouncing them along the cobblestone streets in strollers.

But with the recent approval of the Hague Adoption Convention in the US Congress, it is plausible (though not probable) that all American adoptions from Guatemala will cease by 2008, unless Guatemala comes into compliance with the stipulations set forth by the Hague (Canada has not allowed adoptions from Guatemala since 2001). The State Department is already discouraging prospective parents from initiating the adoption process here.

The Hague Convention has its share of both outspoken opponents and proponents. Those against the treaty point to swelling orphanages in countries that have ratified it, while supporters (in the case of Guatemala) assert that something has to be done to fix a broken system in which there are claims of children being bought and stolen. And it is this claim of child stealing that affects my existence as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala.

Partly due to old rumors of Americans stealing children to harvest their organs (hypothesized to have been started by the Guatemalan military during the civil war to prevent the people from talking to foreigners investigating war atrocities), but increasingly as a result of stories of people going into villages with the intent of buying babies, there is suspicion of foreigners (including other Guatemalans unknown in a given location) among the Mayans in the remote parts of the country. Propelled by fear and lack of faith in the authorities thought to be ineffective and/or corrupt, the local population takes “justice” into their own hands through lynchings. On July 1st an American and a Guatemalan were overtaken by a mob in Chicaman, Quiche after talking with a local boy (they were eventually released unharmed), and on July 17 a Guatemalan man accused of child stealing was beaten and burned to death in the Petén. The mob later burnt down the police station and held 11 officers hostage for arresting four people involved with the murder. Thus far this year, eight Guatemalans have been lynched in connection with child stealing accusations.

Living in a town with a long history of Peace Corps volunteers, among people accustomed to foreigners, these reports have seemed as surreal to me as they might to some living in the states. It wasn’t until last Thursday that the magnitude of people’s fears here really hit home. I was traveling out to the small municipality of Tamahú, about a 40-minute micro ride on a gravel road, to meet some of the weavers in the association. Just outside of town, the bus stopped near a small shack for someone to disembark. A little boy was amusing himself with a pile of dirt and a stick in the yard by the road. Upon seeing me in the front seat (the best place to ride), the boy’s father ran from the house, snatched up his son, and ran back inside, the whole time staring at me with a look of both fear and anger.

Now I have prompted this instinctive fear in babies in Africa who had never seen a white person (or white-ish in my case), but never have I experienced this kind of reaction from an adult. The incident left me slightly alarmed, but mostly just disheartened. As if life isn’t hard enough eking out a living by subsistence farming or some other form of manual labor at which they are skilled, these people have to worry (whether founded or not) about someone coming along and stealing their children. But the irony in all of this is that I don’t even really want kids of mine own—let alone do I have the desire to steal someone else’s.