A report A recent report from the United Nations revealed an increase in hate speech in Costa Rica on social networks.
In total, more than 1.4 million messages and conversations on social networks linked to hate speech and discrimination were detected, compared to 937,000 in 2022.
The ONU believes that a “disturbing wave of xenophobia, racism and intolerance” is being witnessed around the world, and that hatred “is becoming more widespread” in both liberal democracies and authoritarian systems.
In Costa Rica, according to the report, hate speech and discrimination are mainly related to politics, xenophobia, gender, sexual orientation, generational clash, racism, religion and disability. Hate speech about politics and national reality dominated the statistics, with more than 480,000 messages detected in the study.
The Costa Rican professor Carlos Cascante told the voice of america that the causes of the increase “are structural”.
“The weakening of the economic system, the existence of greater social inequality causes these behaviors,” he said.
According to data from the University of Costa Rica, the number of poor people in the country increased during the second semester of 2022. In December of last year, 25% of people lived in poverty. In 2021, the poverty level was 21%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC).
But analysts consulted say that immigration plays a fundamental role in public sentiment, and that immigrants are among those most affected by hate speech.
Racism and xenophobia were the hate speech that increased the most compared to the previous year, with a change of 181% and 110% more, respectively.
More Nicaraguans have sought protection in Costa Rica in recent years than all refugees and asylum seekers in Central America combined in the 1980s, according to the UN agency for refugees.
UNHCR estimates that around 200,000 Nicaraguans have taken refuge in neighboring Costa Rica, the country that has received the largest number of Nicaraguans fleeing the crisis.
In 2018, massive protests broke out in Nicaragua against the government of Daniel Ortega that were violently repressed, leaving at least 300 dead and hundreds injured and detained.
Costa Rica has been a receiving country for immigrants for decades, mainly due to its political stability and economic opportunities, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). About 368,000 Nicaraguans lived in Costa Rica in 2020 — about 7% of the population, according to government figures.
But before 2017, Nicaraguans represented a very small part of the asylum seekers. The amount jumped to 83% in 2018 and 86% in 2021according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank
According to Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development Program of the Inter-American Dialogue, the UN data shows that the migration issue is a hot topic in Costa Rica and a key source of discussion and irritation, at a time when society is polarized. , partly due to dissatisfaction with the situation in the country.
On multiple occasions, President Chaves has said that migrants represent a burden for Costa Rica and that they are mostly “economic migrants” who seek to take advantage of the “generosity” of being a “legitimate refugee”.
“By applying for refuge, you have an immediate work permit. We are allowing the noble figure of the shelter to be abused by hundreds of thousands of people. That easy. This has nothing to do with xenophobia,” Chaves said in a Press conference in November 2022, by announcing a series of immigration measures, including a modification to work permits, which are no longer granted expeditiously.
The measures were described as “a regression” in terms of the treatment of Nicaraguan refugees in Costa Rica by Vasilka Sancin, member of the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.
Chaves also said at the time that he had sent a letter to the UN stating that Costa Rica had hosted some 200,000 Nicaraguan refugees and claiming that the international community was not collaborating with resources to deal with massive immigration into the country of 5 million. population.
The president said that Costa Rica invests between 200 million dollars and 300 million dollars a year to serve migrants.
Human rights organizations have said that Chaves’ statements omit the economic contribution of the immigrant population. A study published in 2022 from the ECLAC calculated that the migrant labor force contributed more than 9% of the economic growth of Costa Rica between 2010 and 2019.
Carlos Sandoval, a Costa Rican sociologist and researcher, considers that the increase in hate speech against the migrant population was exacerbated by the massive arrival of immigrants in 2022mostly Venezuelans, who sought to continue their journey to the United States and many were stranded.
Between September and December 2022, Costa Rica registered the entry of 2,500 migrants per day, according to what President Rodrigo Chaves said at the time. The migrants intended to reach the US, but Washington announced at the beginning of October that Venezuelans would be expelled at the border under Title 42, a health control measure for COVID-19, and implemented a humanitarian parole program to legally travel to the US.
But most of the registered hate speech had to do with politics and the national reality, with more than 480,000 instances showing polarization: a part were in support of Chaves and intolerance against other political groups and people.
The popularity of President Chaves is 71%, according to a survey of Cid Gallup published in June of this year, only below in the region of the Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele and the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Former President Laura Chinchilla, one of the most critical voices of the Chaves administration, said that the UN report confirmed “the perception that various people already had” regarding hatred and attacks on social networks against “those who dared to criticize to public power”.
Chinchilla said that he had to restrict his comments critical of the Chaves government on his Twitter account due to the attacks he received “from trolls.”
“The attacks that are taking place on social networks in Costa Rica are of a virulence that no one should have to tolerate,” he told the VOA.
Former President Luis Guillermo Solís said that the Costa Rican government should use language about migrants that avoids “polarization”. If there is no positive attitude from “the head of the system”, “it is very difficult for its base to react positively.” , he pointed.
Solís was president of Costa Rica from 2014 to 2018.
The Chaves government told the voice of america that repudiates “hate messages and violent tone on social networks.”
Costa Rica’s communications minister, Jorge Rodríguez Vives, said it was “very easy for some political figures” to say that the problem was due to “an attitude on the part of the president of the republic,” but that the Chaves government understood that the matter “is so serious” that he was developing “a national strategy against hate speech and discrimination”, which he hoped to “build on a societal level with the support of the United Nations”.
“We are not in favor of and we are not going to encourage any type of physical, emotional, or online violence,” said the minister.
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