Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas

211 Pages·2010·0.883 MB·English

by  Karen Dubinsky

BABIES WITHOUT BORDERS
Adoption and Migration across the Americas
International adoptions are both high profi le and controversial, with
celebrity adoptions and critically acclaimed movies such as Casa de los
babys of recent years increasing media coverage and infl uencing public
opinion. Neither celebrating nor condemning cross-cultural adoption,
Karen Dubinsky considers the political symbolism of children in her
examination of adoption and migration controversies in North Ameri-
ca, Cuba, and Guatemala.
Babies without Borders tells the interrelated stories of Cuban children
caught in Operation Peter Pan, adopted Black and Native American
children who became icons in the 1960s, and Guatemalan children
whose ‘disappearance’ today in transnational adoption networks
echoes their fate during the country’s brutal civil war. Drawing from
extensive research as well as from her critical observations as an adop-
tive parent, Karen Dubinsky aims to move adoption debates beyond
the current dichotomy of ‘imperialist kidnap’ versus ‘humanitarian res-
cue.’ Integrating the personal with the scholarly, Babies without Borders
exposes what happens when children bear the weight of adult political
confl icts.
karen dubinsky is a professor in the Department of Global Develop-
ment Studies and the Department of History at Queen’s University.
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Babies without
Borders
Adoption and Migration across
the Americas
KAREN DUBINSKY
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2010
Toronto London
www.utppublishing.com
Published in the United States by New York University Press
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-1019-4
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with
vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dubinsky, Karen
Babies without borders : adoption and migration across the Americas /
Karen Dubinsky.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-1019-4
1. Intercountry adoption – America. 2. Interracial adoption –
America. I. Title
HV875.58.A45D82 2010 362.734097 C2010-900378-0
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Desde que existe el Mundo
Hay una cosa cierta
Unos hacen los muros
Y otras las puertas
Carlos Varela, ‘Muros y Puertas’
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Children and the Stories We Tell about Them 3
2 The National Baby: Creating Monumental Children in Cuba,
from Operation Peter Pan to Elián González 23
3 The Hybrid Baby: Domestic Interracial Adoption since the 1950s 57
4 The Missing Baby: Transnational Adoption and the
Vanishing Children of Guatemala 93
5 Conclusion: Setting the Agenda for a Happy Childhood 127
Notes 133
Selected Bibliography 173
Index 191
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Acknowledgments
I’ve worked on this book for almost a decade. Almost always, it’s been
a pleasure, because it has expanded my world and my heart. I’m happy
to here recount my debts and honour my friends.
I’ll start in Havana, for it was there that the idea for this book was
launched, early in 2001, when my colleague and friend Susan Lord
invited me to crash her research trip. Our conversations there helped
to transform some unruly strands of ideas about the global politics of
babies into something that could be planned, funded, researched, and
now written. Sharing a sabbatical term in Havana in 2004 with Susan
and Paul Kelley in order to research the Cuban chapter of this book
is one of the smartest ideas she’s had (and she’s had many). Several
years later, Havana has become a second home. When I, and my un-
usual family, return, we are always greeted with a hot meal, bananas
(which taste like bananas), and a neighbourhood of familiar faces. For
their hospitality, assistance, and countless conversations about poli-
tics, history, fl an, and child-rearing, I thank Aldo Peña Morejon and
Vanessa Chicola, Vivian Rocaberti, Franky Garcia González, and Vilma
Vidal, and Sonia Enjamio, Inés Rodríguez, Lourdes Pérez, and Danys
Montes de Oca. My hermanas Cubanas, Maria Caridad Cumaná and
Mirta Carreras Diaz, are among the best gifts this project has given me.
Caridad’s scholarly generosity is legendary, and forever appreciated.
At the University of Havana, I was welcomed by the Centro de Estu-
dios de Migración Internacional and its director, Dr Miriam Rodríguez.
And I am especially and monumentally indebted to Professor Ramón
Torreira, who was generous with his time, his substantial personal ar-
chive, and, along with his wife, Reina, his hospitality as well. My her-
mano, Carlos Varela, provided the soundtrack as well as insights into
x Acknowledgments
history only the poets possess. Jorge Olivares has supported this project
from the beginning, and by introducing me to Miami’s Little Havana,
he also helped to deepen and complicate my understanding of Cuban
history.
In Guatemala, my thanks to Thelma Porros at the Centro de Investi-
gaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA) in Antigua, one of the
most beautiful archives in which I have worked. During my research
time in Guatemala, Rene Calderon did triple duty, acting as translator,
driver, and, using his vast network of contacts, arranger of interviews
for me. It is possible he knows everyone in Guatemala City. After a few
days of immersion in the past and present of Guatemalan crime and
violence, I started calling Rene my bodyguard as well, and I was only
half joking. Even more reassuring than the presence of a tall Guatema-
lan male, however, was Rene’s ability to maintain both humour and
dignity in the face of catastrophic history, and I thank him, and Rona
Donefer, for their inspiration and their answers to countless questions.
In North America I am grateful to a number of individuals who
facilitated my research at institutions and archives : Johanne Proulx and
Claude Laurendeau at Batshaw Youth and Family Centre in Montreal;
Heather Falconer at the Lakeshore Unitarian Church in Beaconsfi eld;
Shelley Sorin at the Manitoba Department of Family Services in Win-
nipeg; David Klassen at the Social Welfare History Archives, Univer-
sity of Minnesota, in Minneapolis; Sister Dorothy Jehle at the Archives
and Special Collections at Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida;
and Lesbia Orta Varona at the University of Miami Cuban Heritage
Collection.
I worked with a talented group of research assistants on this project:
Karen Dyck, Katherine Harvey, Brittany Luby, Michele Donnelly,
Danielle Beaton, Scott Rutherford, Jennifer Stacey, and Jennifer West-
cott. I received translation help from Tara Bickis, Raquel Vásquez,
Karen Cocq, and Rona Donefer. Mary Caesar compiled the bibliog-
raphy. From this accomplished list (and I blanch as I write this, won-
dering why it possibly took me so long to complete this book when
I had so much great help), I want to note especially the work of Scott
Rutherford, demon researcher. One example, of many: the day Guate-
mala fi nally passed its long-awaited adoption reform bill, Scott sent me
the AP wire story; as I read it, I realized he’d sent it to me exactly sev-
enteen minutes after the wire service posted it (and this, incidentally,
long after the grant ran out). Thanks to the Social Science and Humani-