Information recently submitted to a United Nations group of experts implicates Guatemala’s Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, in at least 80 “allegations of illegal adoptions” committed by the state between 1968 and 1996.
In 40 percent of these cases, the children’s identities were altered. El Faro had access to eight of them, involving nine children placed for adoption between January and August 1982.
Documents in the newspaper’s possession show that Consuelo Porras was involved in irregular adoptions not only of Guatemalan children —most of them Indigenous— but also of children of mothers from El Salvador and Honduras.
At the time, Porras worked at the Presidential Secretariat of Social Welfare. Adoption documents obtained by El Faro identify her between January and August 1982 as the administrator of Hogar Elisa Martínez (HEM), a facility which was part of the national adoption program.
In a statement issued on February 16, the experts said they were “alarmed by allegations of historical illegal adoptions and the alleged role of a high-ranking official in Guatemala,” naming Porras specifically.
That same day, the attorney general ran for the Constitutional Court, where she served as an alternate justice from 2016 to 2018.
“The experts noted that a judicial appointment process is currently underway and urged all parties to exercise caution in light of these serious allegations, which have not yet been investigated,” adds a statement on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The group includes five United Nations special rapporteurs, with mandates ranging from judicial independence to human trafficking and violence against women and children. It also includes three representatives from the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
Since 2022, Porras has been sanctioned by the United States, Canada, and the European Union for corruption and attacks on the 2023 elections. On March 3, after the group of experts released their statement, she was not elected to the Constitutional Court. She has now filed for a third term as head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP).
El Faro obtained her application file for Attorney General and Head of the MP in 2018, when she took office, and compared it with her recent application for a third term.
That position as administrator of the Elisa Martínez adoption facility no longer appears on her resume.
Just three weeks before the U.N. made its complaint public, the Presidential Secretariat of Social Welfare issued a new copy of her employment record that does not include the position of administrator at the Elisa Martínez Home.
A sample of the cases
El Faro accessed more than 100 pages from eight partial adoption files. The records include many “social reports,” prepared by social workers profiling both the children and, often, their alleged mothers; records and applications for birth certificates and passports; letters from the State granting consent to adoptive families; and the final adoption decrees.
El Faro received these documents from an international organization. This organization states that the same documents also appear in the records of victims’ organizations in the Americas and Europe.
The newspaper consulted another international organization, which visited the Historical Archive of the National Police in Guatemala and had access to one of the cases included in this report.
This second organization has confirmed the authenticity of the documents in this case, which is among the eight obtained by El Faro.
This second organization believes that “there is always a degree of uncertainty” regarding the veracity of old adoption records at first glance, but that “there is confidence that the [UN] group of experts has the initial expertise to verify a document that was submitted to them.”
The experts “have an obligation to dig deeper,” they add, “but the group would not risk its reputation if it did not have a high degree of certainty beyond doubt.”
Podcast: U.N. Experts Warn of Illegal Adoptions Tied to Guatemalan AG
The U.N. group of experts, for its part, limited itself to stating that it “received information” regarding 80 cases of irregular adoptions involving Porras and other officials.
They called for “independent investigations into the allegations” and said they are “in contact with Guatemalan authorities regarding this matter,” without providing further details on whether they were aware of or validated specific cases.
Among the nine children of whom El Faro is aware, four were born in Guatemala to Salvadoran mothers, according to birth records and internal reports from the adoption program.
The fifth girl was born in El Salvador but emigrated to Guatemala, where she was placed for adoption. Two siblings were born in Guatemala to the same Honduran mother, and the last two children were born in Guatemala to Guatemalan mothers.
With the exception of one case, the government concealed the mother’s identity during the adoption process. In this last case, the government initially acknowledged that the mother was Salvadoran, but later recorded her country of origin as “unknown.”
To protect the privacy and safety of those placed for adoption, El Faro will not identify by name any child, parent, adoptive family, or the destination country of the adoption.
But between January and August 1982, Guatemalan officials facilitated adoptions in countries such as the United States, Canada, Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, and Guatemala.
The information listed for one set of adoptive parents matches the names and state of residence of a former U.S. mayor and his wife, who are residents of the U.S. Midwest.
A network of officials
By the late 1970s, amid the internal armed conflict, Guatemala had become the epicenter of the global adoption market, often involving irregular adoptions with no judicial oversight whatsoever. The country suspended all international adoptions in 2008.
“It is still widely cited as the worst-case scenario for international adoption, a case study in all that can go wrong when families in rich countries participate, often unwittingly, in a commercial market for children from poor countries,” wrote Rachel Nolan, a Boston University historian, in an acclaimed 2024 book on illegal adoptions in Guatemala.
For three decades, the Elisa Martínez and Rafael Ayáu homes —where Consuelo Porras worked in various capacities for more than nine years— took in hundreds of children who were later adopted.
The adoption cases obtained by El Faro began before Porras took over as administrator of the Elisa Martínez home.
Porras appears in the documents alongside other government officials and institutions with varying levels of involvement at different stages: social workers, fellow administrators, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, notaries, judges, and public registrars in Guatemala City and the country’s second-largest city, Quetzaltenango.
As director of the Elisa Martínez Home, Porras had access to the files of children placed for adoption. U.N. experts state that Porras, in this capacity, was “reportedly” the “legal guardian” of the children in question, from January 21 to August 30, 1982.
The documents themselves also confirm this. On June 8, 1982, in a deed finalizing the adoption of two children, notary Ángel Alfredo Figueroa noted the presence of “María Consuelo Porras Argueta” and referred to her as “Administrator of the ‘Elisa Martínez’ Home.”
The record stated that “the Administrator of the Elisa Martínez Home [gives] her consent to the adoption in her capacity as guardian of the minor in accordance with the provisions of Article 308 of the Civil Code” (sic).
At the end of the document is a signature consistent with the one Consuelo Porras provided in the two applications for attorney general obtained by this news outlet.
In this case, the final document lists the names of the two children placed for adoption and identifies them as “children of unknown parents.” But at least three social reports, prepared by the Elisa Martínez Home in 1977, identified the mother by name. She was also named in a report from the Quetzaltenango Home that same year, when the children were transferred to the adoption program at the HEM.
In other words: Hogar Elisa Martínez knew who the mother was, but Porras, the administrator of the facility and legal guardian, authorized the adoption despite erasing her name from the final documents.
“Social reports” like these form the written basis of much of what the state knew about the children. In each of the eight cases known to El Faro, without exception, these reports identified both the children and the mother by first and last name.
In each adoption, Porras signed at least one document in the chain of paperwork.
In some, she did not personally lie. In multiple others, she was central: She stated that a Salvadoran girl had been born in Guatemala, and declared “unknown parents” in paperwork for a passport, a birth certificate, and the final adoption deed for the children of the Honduran mother.
Officials believed that most of the mothers were sex workers, which is why the State claimed it did not know who the fathers were. The State believed that two of the eight mothers had been murdered. But upon finalizing the adoption, officials stated they did not know who they were.
In the case of the Honduran mother, in June 1977, one of the social reports stated that the mother had died from “wounds caused by a firearm projectile to the chest,” according to the General Hospital.
“The mother was of Honduran origin and earned her living through prostitution,” the report states. It adds, parentheses included, that “some friends of the mother (now deceased) have come to the Elisa Martínez Home, but because it is not in the best interest of the minors, they have not been allowed to visit them, taking into account that it would in no way benefit the children.”
The most egregious case among those analyzed by El Faro is that of a girl born in 1974 in Sonsonate, El Salvador. She migrated to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, with her mother, where she was placed for adoption following her mother’s death. El Faro saw a photocopy of her birth certificate, as well as a receipt for the document’s filing.
The death of this mother, identified by name in multiple records, was investigated by the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office as a homicide.
In March 1981, the registrar of Quetzaltenango, Rubén Darío Rossal, stated the purported cause of death: “She died in this city” in December 1977, he wrote, “as a result of: Carbon monoxide poisoning.” “The deceased was twenty-five years old, unmarried, originally from El Salvador, and a resident of this city,” he added.
An April 1978 report on the child’s entry into the adoption system cites the “reason for placement” of the girl for adoption as “death of the mother.” A report from the Hogar de Quetzaltenango identifies her as “of Salvadoran origin.”
A March 1981 report adds that her mother “died as a result of asphyxiation caused by carbon monoxide” (sic) and that “she was found dead inside the trunk of a car.”
Guatemalan authorities placed the girl in the adoption program. When she was transferred to the Elisa Martínez Home in March 1981, a report to the HEM named the mother and mentioned the investigation into her death.
A year and a half later, on August 6, 1982, Consuelo Porras requested a passport for the girl in a letter to the Director General of Migration. She wrote that the girl “was born in this capital,” “the daughter of unknown parents, cared for at the ‘Elisa Martínez’ Home due to abandonment.”
Porras omits her position at the HEM
Eight years ago, before President Jimmy Morales appointed Consuelo Porras as attorney general, the candidate informed the Nomination Commission that, between April 2, 1973, and September 1, 1982, she held various positions in institutions under the Presidency’s Secretariat of Social Welfare. The last was as administrator of the Elisa Martínez Home.
In 2018, she included a certificate from the Archives Section of the Presidential Secretariat of Social Welfare that cites —parentheses included— her title and assignment as “Care Center Administrator II (Colón Social Welfare Center and Elisa Martínez Home).”
The same document notes that, before arriving at the Elisa Martínez Home, she held the positions of Teacher II and Assistant Teacher II at the Rafael Ayáu Home, another facility for housing children in the adoption program.
This year, her reelection dossier no longer mentions the Elisa Martínez Home. Each page has a consecutive sequential number, with the initials CP, which correspond to Consuelo Porras. There is no break in the order or in the signing of the pages.
The folder contains a general resume as the central thread, interwoven with the documentation supporting each claim. Her resume for this year states that she worked at the Secretariat of Social Welfare from October 1, 1979, to August 31, 1982, but mentions only the Rafael Ayáu Home.
Also this year, an employment record signed on January 26 by the same Secretariat’s Archives Office omits the Elisa Martínez Home. A certificate from that same day also omits it. Both documents are signed by the head of the Secretariat’s Personnel Management Department and an archives assistant.
Three weeks later, Porras said in mid-February, following the U.N. experts’ complaint, that the cases are “false and politically exploited.” In a post on social media platform X, addressed to Secretary-General António Guterres, the attorney general requested an official “review, clarification, and correction.”
El Faro also reached out to Attorney General Porras to get her side of the story. In the morning on Tuesday the 17th, she was asked for an interview and questioned about why her position at Hogar Elisa Martínez no longer appears on her resume submitted this year to the Nomination Commission.
Juan Luis Pantaleón, advisor to the Upper Bureau of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, sent a response by message over WhatsApp, after nine in the evening on Tuesday: “The information contained in the documents presented to nomination bodies is duly sustained in official records and documentation.”
Porras’ office did not respond regarding the interview request, nor provide more details.
The Massacre of a Trial for Genocide
El Faro also reached out to Attorney General Porras to get her side of the story. In the morning on Tuesday the 17th, she was asked for an interview and questioned about why her position at Hogar Elisa Martínez no longer appears on her resume submitted this year to the Nomination Commission.
Juan Luis Pantaleón, advisor to the Upper Bureau of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, sent a response by message over WhatsApp, after nine in the evening on Tuesday: “The information contained in the documents presented to nomination bodies is duly sustained in official records and documentation.”
Porras’ office did not respond regarding the interview request, nor provide more details.
“Comfort for children, terror for the corrupt,” reads the profile of Prosecutor Porras on social media platform X, amid the nomination process. In her profile photo, she is hugging a girl in indigenous attire. Her nomination this year lists her as a judge on the Appeals Chamber for Children and Adolescents from 2009 to 2014.
In mid-March, a Nomination Commission in Guatemala received “tachas,” complaints or objections against the 49 candidates for attorney general. That period has concluded.On April 17, the Nomination Commission must present six candidates to President Bernardo Arévalo. One month later, on May 17, Guatemala’s next attorney general is set to take office.
The U.N. experts, for their part, indicate that an illegal adoption may involve “fraud in the declaration of adoptability, the forgery of official documents, coercion, or the lack of free and informed consent from the biological parents, as well as undue financial gain for intermediaries.”
The experts believe that the dozens of adoption cases could constitute enforced disappearances committed by the state between 1968 and 1996.
“All individuals against whom there are credible allegations of conduct incompatible with human rights standards (...) should not be shortlisted or appointed until a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation has been conducted,” they wrote.
The experts also lamented “that the mothers affected by these illegal adoptions have apparently received neither adequate recognition nor reparations.”