Mariela Sifontes grew up in Belgium under the name Coline Fanon.
At the age of 14, she wanted to know her origins: "When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that I did not look like others," she recalls.
Her parents told her that she had been adopted from Guatemala and what her original name was.
After years of searching, she learned that her biological mother was deceived: she was assured that the baby she had just had had died.
From the 1980s to 2007, thousands of Guatemalan children were irregularly adopted.
According to estimates by the State Department, 28,895 children arrived in the United States between 1999 and 2008. There is no data on how many more arrived in Europe or Canada.
The irregular adoption networks were controlled by the highest levels of power in Guatemala.
Children were snatched from hospitals and private homes, stolen, and sold.
The first victims were indigenous communities during the conflict that for decades pitted the government with the guerrillas.
In 1983, Felipe Sosa lost track of his son Miguel Ángel during his flight from the military.
"We were hiding, we ran away and got out of control. We lost the little boy and, with fear, we no longer went out to look. We didn't know if he lived or died. He was 4 and a half years old," recalls Sosa.
The children were taken from the countryside to the city, where they were housed in nurseries awaiting adoption for which thousands of dollars were paid.
Hundreds of young Guatemalans have begun to search for their lost roots.
They were separated from their families as babies or very young children and, 30 years later and some already with children, they seek to recover their past to complete their identity and be able to explain it to their own descendants.
Alberto Zune grew up without knowing if he is Mexican or Guatemalan.
He moved to live in Guatemala to look for his biological parents, but who he found was his abductors: "The woman who appeared as my biological mother in my adoption papers told me that they hired him to say he was my mother."
This week, we recover this episode in which Julio Vaqueiro and Grace González explain what has been the investigation process of several young Guatemalans to recover their biological families.
The video report, which aired on a Telemundo News special and has been nominated for an Emmy Award, can be viewed here.
