A woman recently went viral for her journey to reconnect with her Latino roots. In a TikTok video posted on January 10 that has since gone on to amass 1.5 million views and over 200,000 likes, Christy Checketts of Logan, Utah, shows herself with a tear running down her cheek while swaying to Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”
Her caption reads, “POV you’re adopted from Colombia and grew up Mormon in Idaho and listening to Bad Bunny makes your soul feel alive but you have no idea what he’s even saying.”
Speaking exclusively to Bored Panda, the 36-year-old revealed that her video just scratched the surface of a powerful story intertwined with the complexities of the Mormon religion and South American culture—all against the backdrop of Colombia’s troubling history with corrupt international adoptions.
Now, she’s started a GoFundMe to finally meet her birth mother in person and hopes her journey can inspire other adoptees struggling with questions about their past.
Christy Checketts was adopted from Colombia in 1989 by a Mormon family in Idaho in what she would later learn to be a crooked adoption
Image credits: divinerearrangement
The mother of two was adopted in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 1989, during a period when questionable adoptions plagued the nation. “There were hundreds of notaries arrested for black market adoption,” she revealed, a statement that's supported by numerous international studies.
According to a Dutch report on adoptions from Colombia: “Theft of babies immediately after birth has occurred repeatedly. Newborn children were taken from the mother in hospital and sold to intermediaries for intercountry adoption. The mother was told that the baby had died or was so mutilated that they would not show them to her.”
Image credits: divinerearrangement
These cases almost always involved vulnerable women of low socioeconomic status, especially single mothers. Checketts’ mother fits this profile. According to her, she had an affair with a wealthy married man while working on his family’s estate and became pregnant. While in labor, she was drugged and given a paper to sign, unwittingly giving her baby up for adoption.
A local Mormon lawyer facilitated the adoption, after which her biological mother was baptized into the church in an attempt to keep her baby
Image credits: GoFundMe
Image credits: divinerearrangement
The content creator is unclear about the rest of the details, which is part of why she so desperately wants to return to Colombia. She knows that some time afterward, she was placed in an orphanage in Bucaramanga, but her biological mother still had access to her.
In fact, another video on her profile captures photos she’s uncovered showing her as a baby with her adopted parents and biological mom all together. She believes she was in Colombia for five or six months before being brought back to Idaho.
The role of the Mormon Church in Checketts’ adoption and life afterward adds another layer of complexity. Black market adoptions in Colombia were often facilitated by “shady lawyers.” According to the aforementioned Dutch report, one such lawyer even became nicknamed the “black father of adoption” for his practice of visiting hospitals to look for vulnerable mothers and children.
Image credits: divinerearrangement
In Checketts’ case, the lawyer was a member of the LDS Church to whom her adopted parents were “very spiritually connected.” It’s unclear to what extent any Mormon members or authorities were aware of the questionable nature of this or any other adoption, but the now ex-mormon did reveal that her birth mother was baptized into the church. “She was under the assumption that it would help her keep me somehow.”
Now, she has a negative view of the religion. “She asks, ‘Are you still Mormon?’ And I’m like, ‘No,’ and she says, ‘Good, they’re crap.’” For her part, though, she left the church years ago. Checketts just wants to help others “find peace even if it means being in the religion.”
Black market adoptions were big business in Colombia in the 70s and 80s, and vulnerable mothers were often drugged or misled by lawyers and notaries
Image credits: divinerearrangement
The Logan-based yoga instructor also makes it clear that she had a good relationship with her parents, who passed away in 2015, around the time she connected with her biological family over Facebook. “I love and appreciate them both more than words can say,” she wrote on her GoFundMe page.
Nevertheless, she did confide that she always felt like an outsider in the traditionally white community of Idaho Mormons. “It’s like, you’re brown. You’re Mexican. So I’m not white,” she said.
She felt like there was a lot of “conditional love” in her community. “We’ll be here for you as long as you stay in this box. But as soon as you step out of this box, we have a problem.”
Image credits: divinerearrangement
However, when it comes to Latino culture, Checketts feels “connected to a home I desire to know.” Since posting her journey on TikTok, she’s received a wave of support from other Colombians and Latinos.
“All Latín in the club we are fam,” said one viewer.
“Hey — Colombian! My family always has room for one more at the table,” said another. "Seriously. You are us. We are you. That’s how this works.”
Many simply said, “Come home.”
Checketts has started a GoFundMe so that she can take her two children to visit her biological family in Colombia
Image credits: divinerearrangement
That’s precisely what Checketts plans to do. Her GoFundMe aims to raise $4,000 so that she can take her two children to visit her biological family in Colombia, a story she hopes will inspire others in similar situations.
“To get to experience this thick Latina love that I felt through just a TikTok post,” she says. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be immersed and surrounded by that, and I want my kids and I to get to experience that. To get to go to our homeland with our ancestors.
"I want to go home.”
"The message is so strong that it's in the rhythm," read one of the comments
