The story of Guatemalan adoption facilitator Mary Bridgett Bonn is sloshing around groups, forums and blogs like crazy right now, and like the Lauren Galindo fiasco in the Cambodian adoption mess, there's no shortage of view point and opinion.

I'm in no way comparing Bonn and Galindo, simply the hoopla attached, but do worry ... greatly ... that the fallout will be similar; that fallout being the end of adoption by Americans as an option for Guatemalan children.

The story also casts adoptive parents in an ugly light, suggesting that the reason for Bonn's alleged breach of sense was due to PAPs balking at the sight of an undernourished child.

Altogether a very bad scene.

And for another sad link between Guatemala and Cambodia, this story, "The Maya Survivors vs Los Genocidios" has Maya activist Antonio Caba discussing the, "struggle of indigenous Guatemalans to demand justice for a genocide aimed at them."

Antonio Caba’s life mirrors that of many Maya men in their thirties residing in rural Guatemala: he tends a cornfield which feeds his wife, his children and himself, Spanish is his second language, he lost immediate family to the genocide that raged through the country in the 1980s, and he was coerced – through threats on his life – to participate in army-organized militias called Self Defense Civil Patrols.
However, in 1989, Antonio risked death by defiantly abandoning the Patrols and devoting himself to seeking out justice for the genocidios, men who masterminded and executed the military campaign which resulted in the death or disappearance of more than 200,000 individuals – the vast bulk of whom were Maya.
Antonio serves as president of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation – a coalition of survivors, representing a host of different Maya ethnicities, determined to hold seven former military and political officials accountable for widespread violence that, under the guise of purging the nation of armed rebels, compelled a UN-led truth commission to declare that Guatemala endured nothing short of genocide.

For a look at the children of Guatemalan Mayan refugees who fled the country during the civil war and ended up in Florida, this report gives a peek.

Their teachers often take them for Hispanic - assuming their native tongue is Spanish, though at home many speak one of Guatemala's 23 indigenous languages.

Anecdotal evidence suggests they fare even worse in school than Hispanics overall - and the number of Hispanic teens attending high school locally drops by half between ninth and 12th grades.

Meanwhile, their parents work two and sometimes three jobs in the towns surrounding the swank resort city of Palm Beach, leaving them to navigate American culture on their own.

And continuing from Florida, the Sarasota Zonta Club is doing its bit for women and children in Guatemala.

On Feb. 10, eight Zontians and four other volunteers assembled 500 childbirth kits to send to Guatemala, where access to sanitation and medical care is low. An international service organization of professional women, Zonta is dedicated to improving women's lives, locally and worldwide.

Meanwhile, back in Guatemala, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reports that the Ministry of Health has announced that it will begin monitoring to ensure uninterrupted supplies of antiretroviral drugs to HIV/AIDS patients in Coatepec.

"For us at MSF, this transfer of responsibility to the public health authorities is a very positive sign," said Dr. Markus Lüthi, MSF Switzerland's medical coordinator in Guatemala. "The medical staff at the Coatepec hospital now has sufficient technical ability to ensure appropriate treatment of a steadily growing number of patients. The protocols are well known and we are reasonably optimistic that anti-retroviral drugs will continue to be available now that The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has committed to supporting the Ministry of Health's acquisition of these supplies through the end of 2009."

The management of the Coatepec hospital strongly supports this program and MSF hopes that the September 2007 elections will not change that. Despite all these precautions, MSF will closely monitor the situation, particularly in the area of medical supplies, and is prepared to provide direct support to patients in the event that medications fall short in the coming months. In addition, MSF continues to provide technical support in managing the national HIV/AIDS programs drug supplies. Delays may still occur as a result of failures to properly manage orders and supplies and problems may still arise due to slow disbursements of funds. MSF will thus maintain an inventory of medications on site until mid-2007 to deal with any eventualities.

I think it's safe to assume that many are hoping the September elections provoke no negative consequences.