I visited Guatemala around '93, and it still stands out as having some of the most desperate people I'd seen on our continent. In particular, near the end of the trip a rumor started to circulate that white people were kidnapping babies and selling them on the international organ market.

Mothers who would have been shoving their children in your face to beg for money were literally cowering in doorways, hiding their children behind them. It was eye-opening.

Unfortunately, although that exact rumor was just a rumor, the adoption "industry" really took off around then and continued to grow for the next 20 years. It started off legitimately, given the number of children of the civil war. However, demand outpaced supply, and pretty soon, white people were showing up in remote villages offering money for women to get pregnant. Once the babies were delivered in hospitals in Guatemala City, they were taken around the block to an "orphanage" where the adopting families were waiting.

Simply walking around the major hotels in Guatemala City in early 2000s (the Marriott especially), you'd see hundreds of families waiting for adoptions.

Source: saw this first-hand.

Interesting, i've been there 3 or 4 times since 2001, and i spent 3 months there in 2008, and i don't think the quality of life was that bad; it's definitely poor. Adoption was a business and i thought they were going to stop it. Women were turning themselves into baby factories.

It probably depends on where you went, how much you went on foot, and to be fair in '93 there were still occasional pogroms of the indigenous population; a rough time.

You were there during the civil war. i backpacked around in 2008 and i spent 10 weeks learning Spanish learning Antigua.

I have to say, even in '93 Antigua (spent 2 days there) was absolutely amazing. 10 Weeks there must have been absolutely fantastic, and I bet you speak Spanish like a native with that immersion.