Word: guatemala
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...From the beginning, The Body Shop was against animal testing and for Third World development, getting its materials from small communities in poorer countries like Guatemala (aloe vera) and Nambia (marula oil). Over the years, the scope of campaigns that Roddick had taken up - and that Body Shop has supported in its storefronts - grew and expanded. Now a tube of lip gloss can increase awareness about domestic abuse and a bottle of perfume is a weapon in the fight against HIV. "She made shopping a political act," says her friend Josephine Fairley, co-founder of organic chocolate company Green & Black...
...That feeling, which more and more Guatemalan mothers and adoptive mothers in the U.S. are experiencing these days, reflects the growing awareness that adoption in Guatemala is all too often a multimillion-dollar underworld trade. The nation's ill-regulated adoption business, run by private lawyers and notaries, is rife with corruption, including forged paperwork, payoffs to women who agree to hand over their children and, in some cases, newborns stolen from hospitals or mothers' arms, according to the government human rights ombudsman's office. One U.S. couple spent almost two years and $50,000 to adopt their Guatemalan daughter...
...activity is driven largely by surging U.S. demand. With adoption in the U.S. still a bureaucratic nightmare, and with fewer babies available in distant places like China and Eastern Europe, Guatemala has become an increasingly popular adoption source for U.S couples. Almost 5,000 babies were adopted last year from the nation of 13 million - the world's highest per capita adoption rate - and 95% of them went to the U.S. Since 1990, in fact, more than 25,000 Guatemalan children have been placed in American homes...
...Reports and rumors of shady adoption dealings in Guatemala have surfaced for several years, but the country's authorities are now under increasing pressure from Washington as well as their own citizens to clean the adoption scene, and that could cause the adoption surge to slow. After hearing of cases in Guatemala in which babies were switched in the middle of adoption processes, for example, the U.S. recently announced that it would require two DNA tests on babies to ensure that a child issued an exit visa is the same one originally given up for adoption. More important, Guatemalan lawmakers...
...Florida resident Clifford Phillips, who runs Casa Quivira with his Guatemalan wife, insists they're victims of the spreading anti-adoption hysteria and persecution. "This is an injustice that needs to be stopped now," says Phillips, arguing that Guatemala is treating him as if he were "guilty until proven innocent." The adoptions of two of the Casa Quivira children, in fact, were found to be legal, and those infants have since left for the U.S. But the rest have been removed to other private facilities, and nine were hospitalized with lung problems and other sicknesses...