We share the blame for separations

El Heraldo

It’s easy to blame U.S. President Donald Trump for his country’s “barbaric and inhuman” policy of ripping Central American migrant children from their parents’ arms—and he deserves it, said Milagro Angélica Castañeda. Only a monster would harden his heart against the heartbreaking cries of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. But to be brutally honest about culpability for the suffering of these children, we must look “beyond Trump” to the “political class of Central America, especially this country.” Our corrupt leaders have embezzled and looted state coffers, enriching themselves while more and more Hondurans

sink into poverty and desperation. They have allowed drug gangs to run unfettered across society. And our leaders have also “cruelly separated children from their parents” by tolerating this country’s unconscionable murder rate, one of the highest in the world. This unlivable hell is what forces thousands of desperate Hondurans to flee this country each year to seek “the American dream, which turns into a nightmare.” Trump, at least, has ended the family separation policy, shamed by the outcry of good Americans. When will our leaders stop “stealing, cheating, abusing, mocking the people?” Can they ever be shamed enough?