Stolen childhoods. Motherhood and child trafficking in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan postwar narrative

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamics of illicit children adoption in the Central American postwar contexts in the novels The Long Night of the White Chickens and Roza tumba quema by the writers Francisco Goldman and Claudia Hernández. This article observes how literature addresses the war experience from the perspective of the combatant mothers, the role that the armed conflict played in the creation of a child population orphaned or separated from their biological family and the participation of both armed organizations and the church in the illegal adoptions

of these children. The illegal adoptions, child traffi cking, corruption and neglect of foster homes represented in Hernández’ and Goldman’s novels demand a more incisive look at the experience of from other perspectives such as children’s or women’s. We consider that with the representation of these experiences arise the interpellations that from literature also seek to recognize the direct violence committed against children during the war and the symbolic violence that prevails today.