U. S. DRIVES GUATEMALA'S BLACK MARKET

GUATEMALA CITY - There is a mixed neighborhood of shacks and mansions
here where the drug gangs barricade the streets to keep out police,
rival criminals and strangers. Not too far away, a hotel lobby fills
daily with American couples steering carriages carrying adopted babies.

Both scenes speak to the large appetites of the United States, and how
they bend the economy of a small hemispheric neighbor.

The official, above-board economy of Guatemala depends heavily on
American appetites for coffee, bananas and sugar. We are the leading
market for Guatemala's exports and the leading source of Guatemala's
imports.

The unofficial, gray-to-black economy is all about the United States.
Guatemalan immigrants living in the United States sent home $3.6
billion last year - 11 percent of Guatemala's $34 billion economy.
That's a sevenfold increase in the estimated amount of remittances
sent in 2001.

Most of the cocaine feeding U.S. appetites now travels from labs in
Colombia to landing strips in northern Guatemala. The gangs offload
the drugs onto trucks and other vehicles that cross Mexico to the
United States. One hundred tons a year, two hundred tons a year - no
one knows for certain.

In 2002, the State Department said the cocaine was transshipped
through Guatemala "with almost complete impunity." That same year,
Guatemalan police attacked a warehouse to get their hands on two tons
of cocaine seized in raids by other police.

This February, three Salvadoran members of the Central American
parliament were found shot and burned in Guatemala. They were
allegedly murdered by Guatemalan police acting on orders from drug
gangs.

The arrested officers, including the head of the law enforcement
office assigned to investigate organized crime, had their throats
slashed in a maximum-security prison.

One-fourth of the immigrants deported from the United States after
being arrested for serious crimes come from Guatemala. Many formed or
joined gangs that manage the Guatemalan drug trade feeding crack
cocaine into slums.

One such neighborhood is El Gallito. It lies in the heart of the
capital but has a tenuous connection to the Guatemalan state.

After curious intruders into El Gallito were gunned down in the
streets, President Oscar Berger took a heavily armed convoy into the
neighborhood for what amounted to a photo opportunity expressing the
power of the law. He left shortly after arriving.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking expressions of American appetites are
the babies of Guatemala.

American parents adopt 1 percent of the 370,000 infants born every
year in Guatemala. For $30,000, a U.S. couple can hire an agency to
find an infant, bring the prospective parents together with the baby
at the Marriott Hotel, navigate the court system and get the right
paperwork together to convince the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and the State Department that the birth mother has abandoned
all claims to the child.

Guatemalans involved with orphanages and anti-poverty programs say
recruiters go into rural villages to find teenagers willing to have a
baby and surrender the newborn to an adoption agency for cash. Prices
range from $200 to $2,000.

We have surrogate mothers in the United States, but at 3,788 adoptions
a year, surrogate motherhood in Guatemala is industrial-strength.
Guatemala's exports, by value, are coffee, bananas, sugar - and babies.

Adoption groups point out that a child born in Guatemala, if it
survives infancy, will face a terrible array of disease, dysfunctional
families and poverty. Most Guatemalans are poor, 30 percent are
illiterate and despair seems to wait around every other street corner
of the capital.

But consider the economics: Demand attracts supply. Our appetites, for
everything from short-order cooks to cocaine and toddlers, put
tremendous strains on Guatemala.