German media on Central American migration

I think the Germans might know a thing or two about unreasonable national leaders with a hangup about minorities and migrants.  And aren’t shy about saying what they think.  Sorry about any translation errors… I’m working from Spanish translations by Emilia Rojas Sasse for Deutsche Welle’s on-line Spanish language edition.

“The most dangerous gangs in Central America are in the government palaces, and Trump’s policy helps them.”

So the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung comments on the massive flight of Central Americans to the north, adding: “When the US president is outraged because the Central American governments have done nothing for the United States, he means they have done nothing to stop the exodus of migrants. But Trump ignores that over the last two years, his own government has done little to make the Central American oligarchs feel forced to give an account. (…) The corrupt rulers benefit even more from the … Trump government shift of focus from good government behavior towards security issues and combating drug smuggling. It is no coincidence that the governments of Guatemala and Honduras have felt encouraged over the last two years to sabotage anti-corruption initiatives. ”

Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) says: “Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans may be intimidated in the short term, but in the medium term they will head north again; people flee because they have no other option. threatened at best, poverty, but in many cases by torture, death and persecution by criminal gangs.  Mexico and other countries want to solve this problem with a multi-million development plan for Central America. The best explanation is that Trump wants to run for re-election in 2020, and he is by served by threats and troop movements than by long-term investments, which can only be described as sad … and miserable. ”

Regarding the threat of punitive tariffs leveled against Mexico, the Zurich Tages-Anzeiger comments: “The economic blackmail staged by the US government, the derision of diplomacy and the undervaluation of good neighborly relations had a blunt effect (…) Instead of financing the much-advertised wall, Mexico itself becomes a kind of wall,  the result of a determined policy of power and possibly a great step on the road to Trump’s re-election But whoever condemns the US president should be aware that Europe’s agreement with Turkey, like the agreement of the Italian Government with those in power in Libya, are exactly the same: the problems related to the migration is outsourced, leaving others to do the work, however dirty it may be. ”

The Düsseldorf economics paper, Handelsblatt, editorializes that for eTrump everything seems negotiable: “It is typical: in any dispute, Trump’s model of negotiation is to settle for much less than what at the beginning was a exorbitant demand,  earning points In some areas (…) But Trump’s success lies in the fact that with each struggle, he imposes on his counterpart his way of thinking, in the sense that irrelevant matters  are negotiated in a package. , migration and tariff levels and purchase of US agricultural products in the case of Mexico. “