Discovering Who I Am: An Adoptee's Journey

Maria Paola

Feb 6

By Maria Paola

I was born on October 27, 1985, in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

That’s how I would have started my story two years ago… But now, I don’t know if that’s really true.

But let’s start with what I do know.

I arrived at Brussels airport in January 1986, where my adoptive parents were waiting. When my mother took me into her arms she thought, Gosh, this is not gonna be easy.

Time proved her right.

I grew up in a white household (except for my brother), a white family, a white environment.

I didn’t grow up in identification, I grew up in differentiation.

I couldn’t relate to my family’s experiences and they couldn’t relate to mine. I made my own experiences and had to learn how to deal with some situations without any help from an adult in my entourage. My parents were sticklers for the rules. They believed that authority was always right, and I was wrong if I questioned that.

I can let you imagine how that went down…

Since kindergarten, I felt the pressure to be like the white privileged kids, to behave, to stay quiet, to obey, to abide by the rules. But none of that was me. I’ve always been a rebellious child, refusing meaningless authority and injustice. But injustice became part of my life from an early age, so I had to be strong. I knew it would cause my parents’ despair but I wasn’t willing to change to please them. I believe this is one of my strengths.

As a kid, I didn’t think too much about identity, where I felt I stood or how people could see me.

I always knew I was adopted and Guatemala has always been a part of me. I was reminded of my origins enough not to forget. At a young age, I had mad love and pride for Guatemala and I loved my skin, my hair, and my Mayan heritage.

Then, Western society began to invade my way of seeing beauty, and I remember thinking that beautiful meant white and blonde. I was eight at the time.

As a young teenager, I started to straighten my hair and felt desperate because I wasn’t skinny. Then my father registered me in a fancy white school without consulting me. Needless to say, it went badly.

At this point, I was 14 and convinced that no boy will ever fancy me because I’m brown, I’m fat, and I’m short.

I battled with my parents to change schools and they finally agreed after two years.

Two years of racism perpetrated by people I knew, people that knew me, people I would talk to every day. I knew racism but not like that, not in front of my face by kids that I talked to every day. I wasn’t ashamed of who I was but I did want to fit in, lose weight, that kind of thing.

I’m still very proud of my roots but I feel like it’s not helping me at all.

My new school was a whole different story. I became exotic, fun, and cool. In Europe (except for Spain), people didn’t know what Latin America was, but then a few Latin people became famous there and the interest came with it. That’s where I started to experience the opposite of what I’d experienced in my previous school: exotisation.

In a way, it’s the same mindset. You’re not yourself, you’re a symbol of a bigger group and you’re systematically brought back to that. Your personality doesn’t matter, you are what people see when they look at you. Now I was the spicy, sexy Latina, but I was only 16 and it just overwhelmed me. I never felt like it was me, I was still a kid.

At this point in my life, my identity became more clear to me. I was always seen as “the Guatemalan” but I knew that growing up in Belgium, I was Belgian too.

At that time though, I didn’t want to acknowledge my Belgian identity. The only times I did were when I was told to “go back to my country” where my response was “this is my country as much as yours.”

But I was rejecting Belgium and Belgian culture, maybe because it rejected me for so long, too. I started learning Spanish and learning about not only Guatemalan culture but all Latin America’s. It was important because it gave me confidence. It gave me the right to claim my heritage…

At least, that’s what I thought.

In November of 2004, I was 19 and going back to Guatemala for the first time. The trip was organized by the “NGO” that was in charge of adoptions between Guatemala and Belgium in the ’80s and ’90s (We’ll come back to this later).

Anyways, this trip was amazing. I felt home. I felt good. I felt at peace.

But for all that, I still didn’t understand why Guatemalan people saw me as a foreigner. That’s when I realize I could not claim only my Guatemalan side. I didn’t grow up there, I don’t know the food, the customs, the music that older generations made their kids listen to, the shows that they were watching with the family. The gap is bigger than I thought.

After that trip, I wanted to go back as soon as possible, I wanted to connect with my roots.

———

Five years later, I took a plane to La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City and stayed in-country for 6 months. I loved every minute of it. I started meeting people, making friends, and I saw how different we were. In particular, I felt more connected with Guatemalans that lived in the US.

They knew what living in another country was, they knew discrimination, feeling like an outcast. This is something that united us.

Then, it was time for me to search for my biological mother. It wasn’t the main goal of my trip, but I figured I might as well give it a try while I was there.

It didn’t take long. I found her in about 30 minutes. It was crazy. I felt that it could not be. This was too easy.

I met her the next day, and my brothers and sisters the day after that. It wasn’t a monumental occurrence. I didn’t really connect with any of them, and I didn’t question that too much. Strangely enough, I didn’t look like her at all, but we both shared some resemblance with her older daughter.

It must’ve been the mystery of genetics…

I spent a few days at her house before taking my flight back to Belgium.

During this trip, I felt closer to Guatemala than I ever had. I learned more about my culture and I felt more confident when I talked about it afterward. I didn’t have much contact with my mother after this. At one point, she asked me to send her $2,000. I refused.

For starters, I didn’t have the money. Even if I did, I didn’t want to create a relationship based on the belief that they could take advantage of me. After two years, I lost all contact with my mother. I tried later but couldn’t reach out to her.

After this trip, I didn’t return to Guatemala for the next 10 years, but my identity was still very clear to me. My blood was Guatemalan, my culture was a mix.

It was a mix because I didn’t live as a white Belgian in the country of her origins. I was just told that “my French was very good,” and that I should be grateful to have been saved. That’s why I would never say that I was 100% Belgian.

———

It wasn’t until 2019 that I discovered the truth: I was adopted illegally.

A national net was in place, that lawyers, politicians, hospital workers (the list goes on) were all involved. This so-called “NGO” that was in charge of adoptions between Belgium and Guatemala was selling children like products. My adopted Belgian parents didn’t know this, they were told my birth mother had given me up for adoption, but this wasn’t true.

That’s when I learned that the woman I met in 2009, who said she was my mother, the woman who said “I love you” and “I’m sorry,” the woman who invited me to her house… was in fact paid to sign my birth certificate, but had nothing to do with me.

This realization didn’t exactly take me by surprise. I wasn’t in shock. I was just disappointed.

That someone could kidnap babies, tell their parents their child is dead, and tear apart families… For what? For a nicer car, a bigger house, a villa at the beach?

It made no sense to me.

It doesn’t change who I am or how I feel about my identity and it certainly won’t destroy me. I don’t know who my real mother is, and I may never know.

I often hear that I was lucky to be adopted, which is funny because as a child, the other kids would tell me the exact opposite.

Now I want people to understand that we should put that in perspective. Living in a Western country doesn’t automatically mean happiness. Being adopted doesn’t automatically mean that your adoptive parents were good people, doing what was best for you.

It’s just like how having a daughter doesn’t make it incapable for a man to be sexist.

I do feel that it’s very hard to figure out who you are as an adoptee. I’m not white, but my family is.

No one taught me about my heritage, my ancestors, my maternal language. I had to go towards that part of me that was missing in my life. My recent discoveries didn’t shake my beliefs. My story didn’t start with my arrival at the airport in Belgium, and I’m always going to be back in Guatemala at some point. It’s a part of me that I can’t and won’t erase.

I’m simply both Guatemalan AND Belgian, and I’m proud of what I’ve made with that.

Maria Paola was born in Guatemala in 1985 and adopted by a Belgian couple in 1986. In 2019, she found out that the adoption was illegal and that she was part of a well-organized human trafficking web. Now, she wants to bring awareness to the reality of adoption and human trafficking from and in countries like Guatemala. This is her first article for Dead Foot Collective.