Defining Diego

A birth family reunion in 2022 helps Diego piece together more parts of his identity, but it also sparks new questions that he struggles to process — especially as he and Laurie grapple with what it means to take a baby from one culture and raise him in another.

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It’s 2022, and Diego has a mission: to reclaim his Guatemalan citizenship. But on the ground in Guatemala City, he finds that his identity as an adoptee is still complicated, even 23 years later.

Diego asks his birth mother if he can meet his birth father, Cristobal — but it’s unclear if that will actually happen.

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We hear from a family whose adoption was in-progress when the Guatemalan government shut everything down.

A few years after his fateful diagnosis, Diego is a surly teenager. The family’s figuring out a way forward. Laurie takes Diego back to Guatemala, where he learns about the meanings behind his birth names — Xicay and Petzey. Diego asks Isabel more questions about his birth father, Cristobal.

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When Diego turns 12, he’s diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and his entire world turns inside out. The family goes into survival mode. Sick and angry Diego acts out — and Laurie and Dan struggle with how to parent him.

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The international adoption racket is surging — and it’s gotten way out of control. All over the world, ugly stories begin to surface: of stolen children, shady adoption lawyers, and birth mothers pressured to give up their children. So in 2008, under increasing pressure from human rights activists, the Guatemalan government shuts the whole thing down.

And on a trip to Guatemala, Diego’s curiosity is sparked by seeing a photograph of his birth father for the first time.

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Adoption has become a booming industry — the price is soaring, and Guatemala has become a top exporter of babies for adoption, second only to China. But when making families becomes secondary to making money, the cost to Guatemalan birth mothers is incalculable — and babies are treated more like products than people.

Meanwhile, on a trip back to his birth village, six-year-old Diego receives tragic news — and Laurie and her husband Dan face a tough decision.

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Laurie takes three-year-old Diego back to Guatemala for the first time since his adoption. While Diego bonds with his birth mother Isabel, Laurie starts talking with birth mothers all over the country. Many are young, live in poverty, or are survivors of the Guatemalan civil war. 

Despite how much adoption costs for families in the U.S., Laurie begins to realize how little birth mothers receive in exchange.

Meanwhile, Diego is growing up as an indigenous Mayan kid in St. Paul, Minnesota — loving hockey, hating Spanish lessons, and navigating what it means to have family in two places.

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It’s 1999, and reporter Laurie Stern wants to adopt a child with her husband. At the time, international adoption seems pretty straightforward — Laurie wants a baby, and there are babies who need parents. But once she arrives in Guatemala City to meet a five-month old boy named Diego, she realizes that nothing about adopting a baby from Guatemala is that simple.

23 years later, Diego’s an adult, and he has questions of his own.

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Defining Diego is the story of one Guatemalan adoptee and his mother, a reporter who documented their journey from his earliest steps, as they try to understand how international adoption boomed and busted — and what it all means for families like theirs, with feet in two worlds.

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Families are complex, and so are the ways they come together. TJ Raphael, host of BioHacked, speaks with the host of our upcoming season — All Relative: Defining Diego, coming to this feed on October 3rd.

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