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Abstract
This paper focuses on one of the ‘child-trafficking scandals’ that occurred in Brazil in the 1990s. Ethnographic research was carried out between 2000 and 2001 within a movement of poor families formed in São Paulo to put pressure on the authorities to review the legal procedures that had led to their children being placed for national and international adoption. Fieldwork was supplemented by other data, including reports by legislative bodies, articles in the press, and case files involving the termination of parental rights. This paper explores views on international adoption among members of the Brazilian elites such as judges, agents in the field of child protection and journalists, in the context of old but persistent neo-Malthusian ideas. Although the Brazilian birth rate is now below the replacement level, it is still common to blame ‘irresponsible’ reproduction among the urban poor for violence in large cities. Drawing a parallel with the routine sterilization of women that prevailed for decades and was encouraged by Brazilian physicians, the paper examines how, in a ‘struggle against poverty’, judicial agents took it upon themselves to enforce ‘birth control’ through adoption, bypassing family consent and the law in the process. The paper concludes by arguing that discrimination against poor families who are viewed as disorganized, immoral and irresponsible – characteristics frequently associated with criminality by a sector of the elites – has contributed to the view that lower-class families do not have the right to bear children, or to keep them.
Acknowledgements
This research project was made possible by a grant from CAPES (Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) and by financial assistance from INRS – Urbanisation, Culture et Société, following the expiration of the Brazilian grant. The author is grateful to Darcy Dunton for the translation of the first version of this paper, as well as Silvia de Zordo, Milena Marchesi, Betsy Krause, Joshua Moses, Cristiano Martello and two anonymous reviewers for their help and comments. This research was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Université de Montréal.
Conflicts of interest: none.
Notes
1. Itaguaí is a fictitious name.
2. See Abreu (Citation2002) for the same irregularities in cases in the state of Ceará.
3. For a similar use of public notice summons to search for parents in some Argentinean courts nowadays, see Villalta (Citation2008).
4. One mother told me that a commissioner for minors, who was also a policeman, pointed a gun at her head when four of her five children were removed.
5. The ethnography collected suggests that, due to the consequences of the sudden removal of their children, many other families, having received no support, were not even able to join the movement. For some parents and relatives, the removal of their children caused the manifestation or aggravation of problems of alcoholism and mental illness, and even suicide attempts.
6. Between 1994 and 1998, families from Italy adopted about 40% of the Brazilian children placed for international adoption (Commissione per le Adozioni Internazionali, http://www.commissioneadozioni.it/stat/1.htm; and Fonseca, Citation2002). In 2004, with an official total of 477 international adoptions, Brazil still ranked fifth among the countries of origin for international adoption in Italy – and tenth in France (Selman Citation2009, 37). In the case of this ‘scandal’, the press also reported adoptions by German, Dutch, Swiss, American, and Danish families.
7. Nevertheless, statistics for domestic adoptions are not available. For other countries in which the ‘child trafficking scandals’ caused a drop in the number of international adoptions, see Selman (Citation2000, 24).
8. To give a few examples, in 2009, there were media allegations of the abuse of power, concealment of information, and the arbitrary removal of the children of at least 42 families for purposes of adoption in the State of São Paulo between 2004 and 2007, involving custodial councilors (conselheiros tutelares) and a state prosecutor (see Constantino Citation2009). In 2006, in the State of Parana, the police arrested six people for child-trafficking. Of the six, three were lawyers, and one was a Civil Police Force support agent. They had been involved in the sale of children to couples all over Brazil (Agência Citation2006). In 2003, international adoptions in Pernambuco were investigated for suspicion of child trafficking, due to fast-track judicial processes in which foreigners were willing to pay $7500 for a smoothly-processed adoption (Associação Citation2003). The media report pointed at public employees of the Civil Registry Office and the administrative department of the Juvenile Court who allegedly adulterated documents in cases that were processed in only three days.
9. A number of kinship studies carried out among the lower classes in Brazil have brought out the importance of this practice (see Fonseca Citation2002; Sarti Citation2003 [1996]; Cardoso Citation1984).
10. Even with the considerable progress made in the seven years of the Lula government (2003–2010), with official statistics revealing that 20 million people rose above the poverty line out of a total population of 190 million, Brazil still has one of highest rates of income disparity in the world (see Rocha Citation2010; Barros, Henriques, and Mendonça Citation2001). It should be noted that poverty affects Brazil's black population more than its white population (see Guimarães Citation2002).
11. For the adoption of the principle of the ‘child's best interest’ contributing to the family's being frequently considered the primary cause of the violation of children's rights, without any responsibility being attributed to the State or of the society in general, see Cardarello (Citation2012). In 2009, the ‘Child and Adolescent Act’ of 1990 was amended, to guarantee the child's right to live in the family of origin. However, it is too early to appreciate the impacts of this change.
12. In the Catholic church, the rejection of family planning policies is a point of consensus in a church otherwise divided with regard to political and doctrinal issues. Although no longer linked to the state, Catholicism is still the dominant religion in the country, as it is the majority religion, including among the elite (Barroso and Bruschini Citation1991, 154).
13. For an analysis of this factors see Martine (Citation1998).
14. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or endangerment of the woman's life. Most abortions are obtained illegally in the private sector. Abortions range from the safest type of operation in private clinics for members of the middle and upper class who are able to pay to procedures done at home using traditional methods and remedies (see Diniz, de Mello et Souza, and Portella Citation1998, 36).
15. It should be noted that 43% of deliveries in Brazil are by Caesarian (IBGEb 2009b, 11).
16. For a description of attitudes of neglect and the brutality of members of hospital staff and the feelings of shame and inferiority that these attitudes caused in lower-class women see Dalsgaard (Citation2004, 149–55). For a case of a woman sterilized against her will in São Paulo, see Nelson (Citation2002, 204).
17. The word marginais here, as the author explains in a footnote (Dalsgaard Citation2004, 222, n22), usually refers to criminals and drug users in popular language.
18. It is interesting that in Dalsgaard's study about the reasons why some women so willingly chose to be sterilized in a poor neighborhood close to Recife, in the Northeast region, a frequent explanation was: ‘we don’t have the conditions for bringing up children’ (Dalsgaard Citation2004, 20). If having no children was out of question, having many was seen as irresponsible behavior (Dalsgaard Citation2004, 16). Viewing these women as simultaneously controlled and empowered, the author advocates that recourse to sterilization represents a search for social acknowledgement, as well as a hope for control over their lives (Dalsgaard Citation2004, 98, 25–7). And yet, as the author asserts, in Foucauldian terms, these women had incorporated their ascribed role as responsible citizens and, simultaneously, as docile bodies, through their identification with the role of compliant patient (Dalsgaard Citation2004, 135).
19. This concept corresponds to the dysfunctional family category used in the United States from the 1960 s to describe poor African-American families (Pine Citation1996, 227), and, in the 1970 s, to the irregular families category in France (Meyer Citation1977). See Meyer (Citation1977) and Donzelot (Citation2005 [1977]) for this categorizing of poor families as a form of discipline in the Foucauldian sense.
20. The local custodial councilors register children and families in social, educational, and financial-assistance programs, exercise control over associations dealing with children and adolescents, and place children in institutions when they deem it necessary.
21. In fact, as mentioned above, it is estimated that approximately 500 adoptions were authorized by the judge, the state prosecutor, and his assistants.
22. For the concept of ‘stratified reproduction’ used to describe the power relations by which some categories of people are empowered to nurture and reproduce, while others are disempowered, see Colen (Citation1995) and Ginsburg and Rapp (Citation1995, 3).