0:07

Previously,

0:09

on all relative, defining

0:11

Diego.

0:14

I give Diego away because

0:17

I'm a woman and I can't

0:19

really teach men's work

0:22

to the boys. So facilitators

0:25

say, hey, if

0:27

you don't want this child, why not give

0:29

it to this American parents? Do you think

0:32

Diego to be happier, here,

0:34

or with us. Where

0:38

I think it's better for my

0:41

son to be in US and

0:43

because you're the parents of Diego.

0:55

Can you hear that? And

0:58

in few minutes, Who do we expect

1:00

to show up?

1:00

Is it back?

1:03

Is it back?

1:04

And we

1:06

don't know whether

1:09

she'll bring the children or how many she'll bring.

1:11

We're kind

1:13

of hoping that

1:15

she'll bring bonds

1:19

What's

1:19

your name? My name? My

1:22

sisters? They were Julia

1:24

and Josefa.

1:26

Oh, yeah. Oh,

1:29

yeah. Oh, Sethma

1:31

is one in me. Oh, brothers,

1:35

brothers and sisters. In the two thousand

1:37

and five trip, we stated the Bamboru. Do

1:39

you remember that? It had that great

1:41

swimming pool right in the middle of everything.

1:43

Yeah. I remember that. And I swam with the translot,

1:45

and I was scared because it drowned. Who

1:48

knows. Those. Trace.

1:57

You had a blast with your siblings,

1:59

Juan, and Josefa.

1:59

But

2:02

your big sister, Julia, she

2:04

had died earlier that year. She

2:07

was only twelve. Dolores,

2:11

our friend and interpreter, had told

2:13

me about it when I was planning the trip.

2:15

She didn't tell me how or

2:17

why Holly had died. and

2:19

I didn't tell you because I didn't know

2:21

how. And I thought that

2:23

Hallead's death might make more sense to you

2:25

if you learned about it when we were there.

2:29

I was six years old when my sister died.

2:32

I was just starting to learn what it meant

2:34

to have an older sister. when

2:36

suddenly I had to grapple

2:38

with what it would mean to never know her better.

2:41

How was I supposed to mourn the bonds I'd

2:43

missed out on for me?

2:45

died when international adoption

2:48

was surging. And during

2:50

the years of the boom, almost fifty

2:52

thousand children left country. That

2:55

meant tens of thousands of families

2:57

around the world like Dan and

2:59

me gained a kid and

3:01

so much love But

3:03

at the same time, it was a

3:05

tremendous loss

3:06

for Guatemala as a country and

3:08

for tens of thousands of birth mothers

3:10

like Isabelle. Yeah.

3:13

I'm one of a whole generation of kids

3:15

with roots in both Guatemala and the

3:17

US. And we're still processing

3:19

what we gained and what we lost.

3:22

on that trip when I was just a six year old

3:24

kid, I could just see one piece of the

3:26

puzzle at a time, and there were some

3:28

parts I couldn't see at all.

3:38

I'm

3:40

Diego Shikai Lou. I'm Laurie Stern.

3:43

And from else in Sony Music

3:45

Entertainment, this is all relative.

3:48

defined in Diego.

3:52

Episode three,

3:53

baby boom.

4:01

Do you

4:02

remember Julia at all?

4:05

Sort of. I mean, I know she she

4:07

really cared about me from from when I

4:09

remember she she loves me.

4:12

Doesn't remember laughing a lot.

4:14

I mean, just being

4:16

happy.

4:18

You

4:18

have always loved climbing things,

4:21

and she was a tremendous tree

4:23

climber. And I remember what the

4:25

visit when you were just

4:27

a toddler. and she was barefooting

4:29

up a tree and you were like,

4:30

how do I do that? She

4:32

was teasing you. I think she

4:33

was throwing you oranges or something.

4:36

Fucking mess. Fucking

4:38

mess. I

4:42

ain't set. There's nothing.

4:43

Of

4:45

all my birth family, whom I was the one

4:47

I felt closest to. She was my

4:49

oldest sibling.

4:51

She was six or seven when you were born.

4:53

and she was always excited to see

4:55

you.

4:56

She was the extrovert of the whole family,

4:58

and she had your exact

5:00

same laugh.

5:14

In two thousand five, while you were in the

5:16

pool, Dolores and I went with Isabelle

5:18

to visit Julio's grave. The

5:21

cemetery was at the top of a steep hill

5:23

overlooking like a tea lawn. There

5:26

were some enormous pastel colored

5:28

headstones and a lot of small

5:30

crosses decorated with plastic flowers.

5:33

Julia's grave was a bare

5:35

mound covered with brush, and

5:38

a tall sprout where her head would

5:40

be.

5:40

After someone died, they always

5:43

planted special flowers

5:45

here. Like, we see this branch is

5:47

here. it's gonna have, like, a

5:49

white flower. It means to present

5:51

holy as life. It

5:53

means she's still alive even

5:56

her body. died,

5:58

but spirits still live. It's

5:59

a flower. Dolores

6:02

and

6:02

I helped Isabella Yang Leach.

6:14

but soon Isabelle

6:16

stopped

6:19

and began to cry.

6:29

She seemed so

6:32

alone in her grief. Like

6:34

she'd forgotten anyone else was there.

6:51

When she stopped

6:53

crying, she let us back down the

6:55

hill to a little faucet where we

6:57

washed the dirt off our hands. So

7:00

can can you tell me

7:01

was that a prayer that Isabel

7:04

Ase? Well, she

7:06

just feels

7:07

sad because she's

7:10

sick. Even,

7:11

Julia, she dropped the

7:13

report. She didn't die

7:15

because starving and why

7:17

now she died. She was so,

7:19

like, twelve years old.

7:22

She was a good old enough. and

7:24

why did she die when you were a baby?

7:26

But now I miss

7:28

you and I think about

7:30

you. and, like, right

7:32

now, your family, you're always

7:34

happy when your brother, you hear when

7:36

he's coming

7:36

from the state. That's what

7:38

he say. Drive.

7:41

Makes me sad. Me too.

7:47

you

7:48

know,

7:49

that day, I was too sad

7:51

to know how to tell you. I

7:53

needed time to compose myself.

7:56

So the next day, Dan and I set you

7:58

down to break the news.

8:00

It's hard to explain death to

8:02

a six year old.

8:04

It seemed like you understood, but

8:06

then all of your questions were so

8:08

practical.

8:09

What was your claims like?

8:12

It was just a amount of dirt

8:14

that was covered with weeds. So

8:16

the first thing that we did when we got there

8:18

is especially isabella pulling

8:20

up all the weeds to make the mound of

8:22

dirt look nice. And

8:24

then at the head of the grave where

8:28

where you would imagine Julio's head is.

8:30

It

8:30

was a beautiful flower growing.

8:33

And Isabelle was crying. It

8:35

was hard to

8:35

understand. but her

8:38

idea is that the flower and the flower

8:40

Julio Spirit will live on.

8:42

Live

8:44

on. Yeah.

8:46

Even though and what she said

8:48

was was about how Julio was

8:50

always so interested

8:52

in you and excited when she heard you were

8:54

coming to visit. What

8:56

Dolores said that Isabelle said was that

8:58

even though Hallez in another

9:00

place, We're here at the

9:02

grave to tell you that Diego

9:04

is here to visit, and we're

9:06

thinking about you, and we know you

9:08

were thinking about

9:09

him. That's

9:12

what

9:14

Isabelle said.

9:17

What

9:17

are what what are the individuals for

9:20

her birthday? Who's

9:22

birthday? Holy ass. Well, I'll

9:24

probably think about her and be

9:26

sad.

9:26

They could

9:28

have a celebration. Yeah.

9:31

A sad celebration. Yeah.

9:33

I suppose they could.

9:35

a home

9:37

A small number.

9:40

Are you being said now, do you?

9:42

Okay. It's

9:43

okay to be said.

9:45

oh

10:04

Two

10:04

thousand five was the same year my father

10:07

died. And

10:08

you were close to him

10:09

and you cried as much as my mother

10:11

did the funeral. I was

10:14

still figuring out who my family was

10:16

and what it meant to have

10:18

too. and then I lost

10:20

people from both families.

10:27

Stay

10:31

with us.

10:33

when visionary

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leaders capture the imagination

10:38

of a nation. We

10:40

choose to go to the moon and district aid

10:42

and do the other things. not

10:44

because they are easy, but because

10:46

they are hard. When disciplined

10:48

communicators speak truth

10:50

to power, Hitler

10:53

knows that he will have to

10:55

break us in this island or

10:57

lose the wall. If we can stand

10:59

up to him or Europe may

11:01

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11:03

the world may move forward.

11:05

Humanity has been shaped by moments in

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say. I'm John Meacham,

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and this is, it was said,

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12:06

Back

12:08

in the early two thousands, international

12:11

adoption was blowing up. Celebrities

12:12

were doing it. Meg Ryan

12:14

adopted. So did Madonna?

12:17

I don't know if you remember

12:19

this. but there were tons of news

12:21

stories about Angelina Jolie and

12:23

her adopted kids. Yeah.

12:24

I I remember hearing about it

12:27

when Kung Fu Panda came out. there

12:29

were these, like, press tours and

12:31

she was with a bunch of kids that didn't really

12:33

look like her kids. Yeah.

12:35

she had her own reasons for wanting to

12:38

adopt internationally. She said

12:40

she wanted to invite diversity into

12:42

her family. and

12:43

the press ate it

12:44

up. How many kids would you like

12:47

that? I have like a football team. A

12:49

football team of kids. Now would these all be adopted?

12:51

Yeah. A

12:53

football team of kids -- Mhmm. -- all

12:55

running around at the house. Yeah.

12:56

Because as an adopted parent, I have the opportunity

12:59

to to kind of to do that, to pull in kids

13:01

from from all different cultures. And I just think it's

13:03

such a wonderful thing to

13:05

to to watch children learning about each other's

13:07

races and religions and cultures

13:09

and I just that's just

13:11

a dream to have that house.

13:14

though So

13:15

Angelina Jolie adopted kids from

13:18

Cambodia, Ethiopia, and

13:20

Vietnam. and those were

13:22

popular countries back in the day, but they

13:24

still didn't come close to Guatemala.

13:25

Like

13:26

you said earlier, fifty thousand

13:28

children were adopted into the United States from

13:31

Guatemala in the decade after it was born.

13:32

And

13:33

Guatemala took second place in the

13:36

world after China.

13:38

Here's another way to look at it. In two

13:40

thousand seven, one of every hundred

13:42

Guatemala and Babies was joining a

13:44

US family. In the

13:45

US, agencies and birth

13:48

mothers could be picky about things like age

13:50

and income, but

13:51

practically anyone with the money could adopt

13:54

from Guatemala. you could

13:55

be white middle class geysers

13:57

like you and then, or you could

13:59

be gay,

13:59

single, believe in any kind of

14:02

God or no God. So a

14:03

lot of people were choosing Guatemala

14:06

to adopt from. But

14:08

how did a few adoptions turn

14:10

into a boom? an

14:11

entire industry.

14:14

So Yeah.

14:16

But if you wanna, like, see the property and

14:18

we can kinda walk in, you guys can ask

14:20

questions and that way we

14:23

get that going. So

14:24

That's Felise Boggs. She

14:27

runs a children's home called Eagles

14:29

nest. Felice is

14:29

in her late forties. She grew up

14:31

in Guatemala as the daughter of American

14:34

missionaries. I

14:35

was two years old, when

14:37

we moved here. And my

14:39

parents came initially to plant

14:41

churches. In

14:42

the early eighties, Felicia's father

14:44

was mentoring pastors around Casaltonango.

14:47

And

14:47

her mother was trying to learn Spanish

14:49

by spending time in the local market

14:52

when one day This

14:53

lady came to her and said

14:55

that she had just had a baby.

14:58

And the baby could not open

15:00

her eyes and that she thought the baby

15:02

was was blind. My

15:04

mom she's like, I'm not a

15:06

doctor, but I can take a look. She

15:08

realized that this baby had not been bathed

15:10

yet. And so my mom took some

15:12

warm cloth and some

15:14

Vaseline and just kinda cleaned her up

15:16

and baby opened her eyes.

15:18

Words started

15:18

getting out the police's mother knew stuff

15:21

about babies. So the family

15:23

started taking in children. We got a

15:24

house big enough that we

15:27

started receiving kids.

15:29

And at one point, we had

15:31

twenty people in our house.

15:33

I had wall to wall beds

15:35

in my room plus a crib.

15:37

Felicia's parents kept doing more and more

15:40

adoptions, dozens a year. In the late

15:42

nineties, the family opened a

15:44

US based adoption agency to

15:46

handle growing demand. You know, one of

15:47

the hard things about reporting on

15:50

this topic is that there's a lot of

15:52

talk and not a lot of documentation. And

15:54

I've talked to a ton of people in the adoption

15:57

world. And one of the reasons I found

15:59

Felise so

15:59

credible is that she was there

16:02

before, during and after the boom.

16:04

And she seemed pretty clear eyed about how

16:06

things were. and she's

16:07

working with the Guatemalan government now.

16:10

Right. And back when she was placing

16:12

children internationally, police said

16:14

she found families for children. not

16:17

children for families.

16:18

She said birth mothers or the

16:20

Guatemalan government brought children to Eagles

16:22

nest, not the other way

16:24

around. My

16:24

parents probably helped a good fifteen

16:27

hundred kids get into

16:29

forever homes.

16:30

Forever homes. That's adoption

16:32

speak for adoptive families.

16:34

Felice's parents had been facilitating

16:36

adoptions for years. But in

16:38

the late nineties, when demand for

16:40

babies soared, they needed a

16:42

bigger place. They

16:43

found a property that used to belong to the

16:46

Guatemalan dictator, Ríos

16:48

Mont. It's

16:48

a cluster of small white buildings on

16:50

top of a mountain. That's where Eagles

16:52

Nest is today on the shores of

16:54

Lake Aptitlan near where my birth family

16:57

lives. Yeah.

16:58

But in the early two

16:59

thousands, as more and more agencies came

17:01

on the scene, police started

17:03

hearing troubling stories.

17:06

Families

17:06

would fill out applications

17:08

to adopt, and they would put

17:10

very specific parameters of

17:12

what they wanted. I would like a

17:14

girl between the ages of zero and six

17:16

months that has curly hair and green

17:18

eyes from Guatemala and light skin because

17:21

those middle people

17:22

are wanting their

17:25

their funds they would go out and try

17:28

to find that child. As more

17:29

and more people started adopting from

17:32

Guatemala, the

17:32

cost skyrocketed What

17:34

we were seeing was other agencies

17:36

were charging triple what we

17:38

were charging fifty thousand

17:40

to, you know,

17:41

seventy five thousand dollars. know,

17:44

and we didn't understand like why.

17:46

The why

17:47

is pretty simple. Families

17:49

in the US were willing to pay that

17:51

much. Adopted parents demanded

17:54

Guatemala supplied. So

17:56

the

17:56

money is flowing

17:59

from the

17:59

adoptive

18:00

families. through the agencies to the

18:03

private

18:03

attorneys. That's

18:05

Kelly Bunkers. She's

18:07

an American who worked in Guatemala

18:10

for a US adoption agency during the boom

18:12

from two thousand three to two thousand five.

18:16

International

18:16

adoption made a lot of Guatemala's middle

18:19

class. It wasn't just lawyers and facilitators.

18:21

It was the people who translated

18:23

documents, secretaries, foster

18:26

mothers, and all the fancy

18:28

hotels that staffed up to serve

18:30

adoptive parents coming to pick up their

18:31

babies. Adoption brought in a hundred

18:34

million dollars a year. It was its

18:36

own industry. Yeah. Kelly said

18:37

adoption had changed

18:38

from making families to making

18:41

money. So it

18:42

was becoming obvious that

18:44

the same birth mother was

18:47

relinquishing child after child

18:49

and within very close

18:53

proximity. So giving birth relinquishing

18:56

nine or ten months later, relinquishing

18:58

another child. It's a

19:00

huge red flag. It tells

19:02

me that This is

19:04

absolutely a business.

19:07

Diego,

19:08

there's this state department graph

19:11

that shows how many babies came from Guatemala to the

19:13

US, starting the year we brought you to

19:15

Saint Paul, nineteen ninety nine. Do

19:17

you know what

19:17

I'm talking about? Yeah. I

19:19

mean, it looks like you're climbing

19:21

in impossibly steep mountain. The

19:23

year you were born, a

19:24

thousand Guatemalan babies came to

19:27

the US. Yeah. And

19:28

by two thousand three, it

19:30

had doubled, and then it doubled

19:32

again. To nearly five

19:34

thousand in two thousand seven.

19:36

It just

19:37

kept going up. For

19:38

Kelly, it became clear that this

19:41

massive growth in adoptions was

19:43

not about helping needy children.

19:45

It was about profit. She remembers

19:47

one time when she was sitting in a lawyer's

19:49

office with a birth mother. They were waiting

19:51

for the

19:51

results of medical tests.

19:54

And it came back that the baby was HIV

19:55

positive, which also meant that the birth

19:58

mother was HIV positive, and

19:59

she did not know at

20:02

that point. And

20:03

I witnessed

20:04

basically the

20:06

lawyer handing back

20:09

the six

20:09

week old baby to the birth mother

20:13

telling her in no uncertain terms

20:14

that she was HIV positive, the

20:16

baby was HIV positive, that this

20:18

baby was no longer eligible. for

20:21

adoption and that she would therefore need to

20:23

pay back the money

20:25

that she had received.

20:31

That's

20:31

just so fucked.

20:33

That poor woman was on the hook for money

20:35

she probably didn't have.

20:38

and she learned that both she and her

20:40

baby had HIV. Yeah.

20:43

Eventually, Kelly left her job. and

20:45

became a pretty local critic of

20:48

adoption. And she wasn't alone in

20:50

realizing there was something fishy about the

20:52

boom. Right.

20:54

Alicalone, the anthropologist we talked to earlier,

20:56

was realizing the same thing.

20:58

She first got interested in adoption

21:00

in the late nineties, when

21:02

a couple of friends became translators. Her

21:05

curiosity led her to an online forum

21:07

for adoptive families. There,

21:09

she could see the same stories being

21:11

recycled. Lawyers were telling adoptive

21:13

parents what they wanted to hear.

21:16

All birth

21:16

mother sounded the same.

21:19

How did

21:19

they think that was normal?

21:21

poor woman who

21:22

migrated to Guatemala City was a

21:24

housemate, got pregnant by mistake, will

21:26

lose her job if she doesn't

21:27

place her baby. end

21:30

of the story. The system

21:33

was horrific. It was

21:35

just

21:35

free market. It's the best example

21:38

of free market. of

21:40

children that I

21:41

know of.

21:48

Stay

21:55

with us.

21:57

Hi friends.

21:59

It's

21:59

Kia and

22:02

Joanna. We are best friends and we co founded a

22:04

company together called The Home Edit. We may

22:06

be professional organizers, but our lives

22:08

are pretty chaotic. When our lives get

22:10

too crazy, we have each other to lean on

22:12

and laugh with. because that's really what best

22:14

friends are for. So we want you to join

22:16

us each week as we talk and laugh

22:18

about life's chaos with each other, old

22:20

friends, new friends, and of course you. Sony

22:22

Music Entertainment, Hello

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a white man

22:36

known for his minimalist sculptures,

22:39

and a Cuban woman breaking

22:40

barriers with her genre bending

22:42

performance

22:42

art. Anna fell from the thirty fourth

22:45

floor window of Karl's New

22:47

York apartment. her untimely death

22:49

split the art world into. This

22:51

is death of an artist.

22:53

Listen to death

22:54

of an artist wherever you get your

22:57

podcasts.

23:03

Before we

23:03

got to Santiago at Tijuana on that trip

23:05

in two thousand five, We

23:07

made a stop in Antigua to meet

23:09

a woman whose job was a part of the

23:11

boom, but in a very different

23:13

way. So, Susie B was

23:15

a searcher. That

23:16

meant she helped adoptive families find their

23:18

kids' birth mothers. She doesn't use her

23:20

full name to protect her and the

23:22

birth mother's privacy. Well, I

23:24

am Susie. I live in

23:27

Guatemala, and I I look

23:29

for Guatemala,

23:30

birth mothers who had given

23:33

children in adoption. We were in

23:34

the courtyard of our hotel.

23:37

You

23:37

went off with your dad to play in the

23:39

fountain. Our family

23:40

didn't need her services, of course,

23:42

but I was trying to make sense of

23:44

how other families were finding ways to

23:46

connect the two worlds. Quadamala,

23:49

and their adaptive

23:51

countries. Susie

23:52

is like the o g of searchers.

23:54

By the time she talked to you, already

23:56

connected more than two hundred birth

23:58

mothers with their children in other parts of

24:00

the world. It was really delicate work.

24:03

This is

24:04

really very huge for the birth

24:06

of brothers to give a child, to relinquish

24:08

a child is very, very difficult.

24:10

Those children are loved. they were

24:12

not

24:12

given away because they were not loved. Susie

24:15

traveled all over for her work from

24:18

neighborhoods in Guatemala City to

24:20

remote villages. It

24:21

was really difficult to find many

24:24

birth mothers because they tended to keep their

24:26

pregnancies as secret. And

24:28

so she was always really careful to speak to

24:30

them privately. She'd even come up

24:32

with excuses and disguised as to

24:34

get them alone. Yeah.

24:36

She

24:36

was able to talk to so many birth mothers

24:38

in really private moments.

24:41

and I was really hoping to hear from her that those

24:43

meetings were worth it. When

24:45

I come and visit

24:46

and they see the pictures of their

24:48

children, that they

24:50

are first, they're alive, they're

24:53

healthy, and most of everything they are

24:55

loved. You know,

24:55

it's it's incredibly healing. And I've

24:57

seen them cry

24:58

in emotion. I

24:59

I've seen in happiness, in

25:02

in pain, in shame,

25:04

in guilt, a lot feelings

25:06

come together at that moment,

25:07

and it's a healing experience.

25:10

You're

25:10

sure? I'm

25:11

sure. I'm completely sure.

25:13

I

25:13

really trusted Susie. She

25:16

had so much wisdom, and Dan

25:18

and I still had so many questions.

25:20

So

25:20

I asked for

25:22

advice. This is

25:22

all very personal for

25:25

me because

25:25

my my first consideration is

25:28

Diego's well-being. Mhmm. I

25:30

ask

25:30

myself sometimes why

25:32

we're doing this, why we

25:35

want to stay connected to his

25:37

village and his people, I

25:39

think, you know, why do you teach your children

25:42

about God and about

25:44

religion? It's because you believe in

25:46

that. We mothers

25:47

teach our children in what we believe.

25:50

It will be up to them when they're

25:52

older to get

25:52

rid of

25:53

those beliefs. or to lead by

25:56

them. But I think to provide the

25:58

chance to a child to be in

25:59

connection with his birth family, I

26:02

think he would appreciate After

26:05

we left

26:07

Susie, we made our way to Santiago,

26:10

Chitlan. It

26:11

was our second trip there since he first came to Saint

26:14

Paul. We met up

26:14

with Isabelle and Dolores, and we were

26:17

sitting with him in front of the bungalow where we

26:19

were staying. I hadn't met my birth

26:20

father, but I was curious.

26:23

And this time, Isabelle had something

26:25

for me. She handed me

26:27

a photo. Okay. Exactly.

26:30

That is your birth

26:32

father. It showed a young

26:34

man in army fatigues holding

26:36

up in salt rifle in

26:38

greenie. This

26:42

was

26:43

an image that took on

26:46

gigantic says I was growing up.

26:48

He's cool. He's cool.

26:50

You like the --

26:52

Yeah. -- uniform and

26:55

the gun? I know that.

26:57

I know you

26:58

do.

27:05

When Julia

27:07

died,

27:07

I didn't really know what was going

27:10

on. But I heard

27:11

a version of her death

27:13

that was different from what Isabelle told you.

27:15

She told me

27:16

Julia had died from an illness.

27:18

Back in the two

27:19

thousand five trip, kids in

27:21

Santiago, Titlan, told me a story while we

27:23

are playing. She was

27:26

sick and her

27:28

she's still a mango from

27:30

the neighbor and the dad got so

27:33

frustrated. Like, he drink too much

27:35

alcohol. And

27:37

so He kicked her in the stomach

27:38

and she died.

27:43

I'd think

27:44

about the story I heard that

27:46

my birth

27:47

father, Pristobal, a real

27:50

soldier, the real soldier had

27:53

possibly

27:53

killed my sister, Julia.

27:56

And

27:57

even though the story was never confirmed,

27:59

what the hell

28:00

was I supposed to make of it?

28:02

For many

28:03

years, we accepted both

28:06

possibilities about how Hootia had

28:08

died. We

28:08

didn't really know and we still

28:10

don't know what happened.

28:13

We

28:13

had two different stories.

28:14

Dan and I didn't know what

28:16

to think about Kristo Ball either. We

28:18

thought

28:18

it was probably for the best that you had never

28:21

met him. but

28:21

maybe you didn't feel that

28:23

way. I

28:24

didn't. I've

28:25

always wanted to meet him. And each time

28:27

we go, I hope we might see

28:30

him. Where

28:30

do you think that comes from? Imagine

28:32

you're looking

28:32

at a family photo and a

28:34

frame, but the

28:35

photo is folded up inside

28:37

of it. and so you can only see some of the

28:40

faces. If you can just

28:42

unfurl the edges, you'll be able to see

28:44

more faces. and you'll know who

28:46

else should be in that frame. Growing

28:48

up adopted,

28:49

I knew some of those faces,

28:51

but Cristobal was behind the folded up little

28:54

edge that I wanted to pick at.

28:56

I mentioned

28:58

Julio's grave had weeds

29:00

on it. that made the whole

29:03

thing seem especially sad,

29:05

but there was

29:05

something I didn't know. The reason

29:07

it looked like that was because of

29:10

Isabelle. She

29:11

was pregnant, and the local

29:13

belief is that you don't go to a

29:15

cemetery when you're carrying new life.

29:18

I guess she made an exception because I'd

29:20

asked to go. I felt

29:22

bad about that when Dolores explained it

29:24

to me.

29:32

your dad and I were sitting with Dolores

29:34

and Isabelle outside our bungalow, and

29:37

we were trying

29:37

to understand what they were telling us.

29:39

must have used There's nothing changed in

29:42

her life. It's been the same

29:44

because this man doesn't leave her

29:46

alone. He keeps coming and makes

29:48

her pregnant. and

29:50

then

29:50

That's Chris Doble. She's talking

29:53

about. Yeah. And I don't know much about

29:55

what was going on between them. but it

29:57

seemed to me, Isabelle didn't have much

29:59

control over her

29:59

circumstances.

30:01

She's

30:03

gonna ask you for us if you're interested

30:05

to have this try up. And if you

30:08

don't and then she'll take care of

30:10

it. At

30:12

first, I

30:12

couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that

30:15

Isabelle was pregnant. I

30:16

looked again, and sure enough,

30:19

there was a little round bulge under

30:21

her skirt. She said the sonogram

30:23

showed it was a girl.

30:25

She

30:28

say if

30:33

you take that baby, and

30:35

she'll give it away. But if someone

30:37

else, she doesn't gonna give it

30:40

away. Dan and I weren't miked,

30:41

so we're hard to hear.

30:44

but we were blown away by

30:46

Isabelle's offer. Yeah. Okay.

30:47

We're gonna have to talk about this.

30:53

I told Dan

30:53

I needed time to think. She

30:56

feels

30:56

the connection too. Yeah.

30:59

Likewise. Yeah. It

31:02

could been right then and there if it had been up

31:04

to Isabelle and me. I mean, we both

31:07

loved you. Why wouldn't I raise her

31:08

new baby too?

31:10

We can't afford

31:13

it.

31:13

But Dan shut it down right

31:16

away. We can't afford it, he

31:18

said. It's

31:18

just so interesting for me to think

31:21

like I could have had a

31:23

sibling. I mean, I'm kind

31:24

of glad it didn't. I like being

31:26

an only child, but I don't know.

31:28

Could you ever even afford

31:30

it? Well,

31:30

you know what, I thought maybe we could

31:32

do that. But

31:33

another part of me knew that Dan

31:36

would say never in a million

31:38

years. I mean, we would have had to go

31:40

through the international adoption system

31:42

again. and that meant another twenty five

31:44

thousand dollars for a lawyer or maybe

31:46

their price had gone up.

31:49

Dolores told me that if we'd been

31:51

another family in the village It would be

31:53

no big deal

31:53

to Israel's baby. The lawyers

31:57

to to do the adoptions, they

31:59

charge some more

31:59

money than they have. I

32:02

wish it was easy. Just get

32:05

a baby like here. If I

32:07

wanted to adopt this baby,

32:09

I just pay the midwife, go to the

32:11

municipality. They'll be my baby. I

32:13

don't spend any money. Just maybe

32:16

couple hundred kiddos. They'll be

32:18

my daughter Please

32:20

let Isabelle know that if

32:22

if we had the money, we would

32:24

be happy

32:26

to have

32:26

the other sisters

32:28

any heart that seems to have a

32:30

fc city with us

32:35

So

32:39

there it

32:42

was again. your

32:45

two worlds butting up against each other.

32:47

You and

32:48

Dan and my life in Minnesota,

32:51

and Isabelle and my siblings in

32:53

Santiago at Tianan, Right. because

32:55

Isabelle and I couldn't make an adoption plan

32:57

on our own. There was an entire

32:59

world of money and legal paperwork

33:01

between us.

33:05

So Dan

33:05

and I had come to the limits of

33:07

the commitments we could make and how

33:09

tangled we could get. And

33:12

at the same time, we were all

33:14

so sad about Hootia.

33:16

Yeah.

33:16

I mean, it still hurts

33:18

me. Uzi Hootia is a wound and

33:21

don't know if it'll ever close.

33:23

But that's

33:23

the thing. Loss is a big part

33:26

of being an adoptee, and all

33:28

that loss leaves me with a lot of work

33:30

to do. to stitch everything back

33:32

together in a new way.

33:34

For me, I also had to

33:36

dig deeper in my reporting in order

33:38

to understand what the adoption boom had

33:40

cost Guatemala, and that

33:43

meant going to some pretty dark

33:45

places.

33:45

And for me, my world was about

33:48

to expand in ways I couldn't

33:50

even imagine. I'd always

33:52

wanted to fill in more of my family

33:54

picture. There

33:55

were more people I needed to

33:57

meet, and somewhere closer than it realized.

34:30

Next time, on all relative,

34:32

defining Diego. Do you

34:34

notice how much you guys

34:36

look like each

34:38

other? being Carter would have him

34:40

look a lot like except for the glasses or

34:42

h.

34:42

I don't know if my fellow citizens

34:45

understand this, but there are A lot

34:47

of US families who adopt babies from Guatemala, thousands of babies.

34:49

The way that international

34:52

adoptions boomed Guatemala

34:54

is

34:54

not something that I think anyone

34:56

who has intimate knowledge of it would care

34:58

for repeat. It's because they

35:00

thought you were dead because that's

35:03

what

35:03

the man says. The whole thing is related to

35:05

the man. To death. Who is

35:07

your biological father?

35:13

Don't wanna wait for that next

35:15

episode, but you don't have to. Unlock

35:17

all episodes of all relative

35:20

defining Diego ad free

35:22

right now by subscribing to the binge,

35:24

our new podcast channel. Start your

35:26

free trial by visiting the all

35:28

relative defining Diego Showpage on

35:30

Apple Podcasts or visit get the

35:32

binge dot com to get access

35:34

wherever you get

35:36

your podcasts.

35:39

all relative, defining Diego is a production of

35:42

something else in Sony Music

35:44

Entertainment. It's written and hosted by me,

35:46

Laurie Stern. and me,

35:48

Diego Shikai luke. Mio

35:50

Warren is our senior producer.

35:52

Associate producers are India Whittington and

35:54

Kyra Assabe Bonsu. Executive

35:56

producers are Lizzie Jacobs,

35:58

Jude Campner, and Tom

36:00

Kanen. Lizzie Jacobs is our editor, and

36:02

we had additional

36:04

editorial help from Meghan Ditri on this episode. Dara our

36:06

engineer. And we had additional mixing

36:08

by Sam Bear. Our theme song

36:10

was composed by Galthem Shriikashant.

36:13

Production management help from Iike Ibatola

36:16

and Lilly Hambly, fact checking

36:18

by Natsumi Adhisaka. Our

36:20

adopti consultant is Eric Mann,

36:22

translation by Dolores

36:24

Rixson, and special thanks to

36:26

my dad, Dan Luke. Thank you

36:28

for completing our little teeny family.

36:32

If you love the show, follow us on

36:34

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon

36:36

Music, Stitcher, or wherever

36:38

you get your guests.

36:50

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