Chile Forum

Hi, I was adopted from Santiago, Chile, and moved to New York. I am trying to find my birth mother or any family I may have in Chile. I don't speak Spanish, so I am unsure on how to get any information, I tried to call the embassy but all the options are in spanish. any help would be great!

The national agency of child services here is Sename.cl - they are responsible for adoption and have a section about tracking birth parents.

Por medio de este formulario, los jóvenes y adultos adoptados que desean obtener antecedentes de sus familias biológicas, pueden contactarse con el Departamento de Adopción del Servicio Nacional de Menores. En respuesta, un/a profesional del Departamento de Adopción del SENAME se comunicará a través de correo electrónico, en un plazo máximo de 5 días hábiles.

Basically this means you have to contact the department of adoption at Sename via email and they will get back to you. Perhaps Spenser Global (the owners of this forum) can assist at a fee, as you will struggle without Spanish, or you can get a Spanish speaking friend to get things started for you.

Well, we have handled some adoption related issues.

Unfortunately I have some likly bad news for you.

In Chile, adoption often means there is a "scandal" of some sort (does not take much to make a family scandal in Chile). Basically we are talking about a country where even today, to even suggest let alone assist with an abortion (e.g. driving someone to a shady doctor or helping them get on plane to Cuba) is on par with conspiracy to commit first degree murder (Gringa women's lib advocates need to be very careful about what they say in public and what they do).

So, adoption is the only legal alternative in a country that even now only has about 16 million inhabitants. It is completely possible for someone to run in to their birth parents on the street and not even know it. In order for adoption to work, secrets must be kept forever or no one would ever adopt in Chile. Thus, records are not only sealed but destroyed. There is very little chance of going to the courts to open adoption records because there typically are none, and the courts would likly never let it happen if there were records somewhere.

Now, that said, there is always the private investigator route, but that is a long shot and depends a great deal on what information you have already to work with.

I already have all the legal adoption papers in english and Spanish I have my birth mothers name and date of birth and where she was living at the time, I am trying to find out how I can get information on where she lives and possibly her birth certificate stating her parents names, or if she has any family or other children. would something like this be easier having her name already and id number?

jegreen8707 wrote:I already have all the legal adoption papers in english and Spanish I have my birth mothers name and date of birth and where she was living at the time, I am trying to find out how I can get information on where she lives and possibly her birth certificate stating her parents names, or if she has any family or other children. would something like this be easier having her name already and id number?

That is an encouraging start. I wish you all the best of luck in your search as I know someone in basically the same situation. When you do find your family in CHile and go back for a visit do me just one favour please. Take Snooki back with ya.

Seems you are a very rare case of someone with something to work with. The adoptions cases we have been contacted for we are often lucky if the person's birth date is real, let alone have any other information to go on such as an area they were born.

We do handle background checks and tracing, including working with PI when needed.

The short and relatively DIY steps are:

Name, birth date ---> RUT ID ---> DICOM credit records, birth certificates, and so on.

If that does not yield what you need, then you are probable going to need outside help.

I am not going to get in to all the ethics of contacting your parents. Sure that is something you have thought about long and hard. Just one word of caution on a cultural level, do it quietly and slowly. Again, very very small country.

The small country thing, also cuts both ways. I think overall Chileans, perhaps because it is such a small country, tend to get over things a bit faster than other cultures. What seemed like a scandal last week or last year in a family, the whole family often will simply shrug it off and go on as if it was no big deal. Everyone has a different situation of course. That is just my general cultural sense of how things tend to go.