The shadow of drug trafficking hangs over the tranquility and tourism of Costa Rica

The increase in homicides year after year in Costa Rica reached the red mark of 656 murders with firearms in 2022, 68 more violent deaths than in 2021, and some 88 more than in 2020, which has raised alerts from the citizenship and government in a country considered an oasis for tourism, a benchmark for democracy in Latin America where there is no army and characterized by tranquility.

While walking the streets of downtown San José, Costa Rican citizen Inés Poveda Sánchez told the voice of america, when talking about the situation in the country, that in Costa Rica one is safe depending on the circumstances.

“Yes, these crimes that occur due to drugs have increased, but you are not attacked if you are sure of the place where you are walking and with the people you are with and at what time you go out,” explains Poveda.

His appreciations are not far from those of his compatriot Leonardo Hernández, who comments to VOA that the wave of crimes that worries the most are the shootings and registered fatalities that point to the actions of drug trafficking in the country.

“Hopefully the big authorities pay attention because all citizens are thinking about this problem; and not only us as Ticos, but all those who come for tourism”, says Hernández.

The engine of tourism

Tourists, however, do not see a serious problem of insecurity, although they acknowledge that there are “warnings from the population” and even from the authorities and the countries they come from, to “be alert.”

The American tourist Giselle Hernández, commented to VOA that “the truth is that being in tourist places I have felt very safe”, although she sees a counterpoint in the capital where recommendations increase, especially when visiting the market, but that having grown up in Mexico, “she is used” to environments where You must be “very alert.”

For his part, the American tourist Rommel González, tells VOA On the contrary, he has been visiting Costa Rica as many times as he can for 11 years and that there are a lot of police in the squares and streets of the city, so he takes the security alerts he receives with caution. In his opinion, the situation is not alarming.

Costa Rica received a total of 2 million 349,537 tourists in 2022, according to records of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, with an amount that exceeded more than a million visitors in 2021, the government institution exceeded travel expectations as planned for that post-pandemic year with Americans in the highest percentage of visitors.

Despite everything, the Minister of Tourism, William Rodríguez, has calculated that the joint efforts of the private and government sectors are focused on equalizing and, if possible, exceeding by 2023 “the tourism indicators that the country had before the pandemic” of COVID -19.

The government of President Rodrigo Chaves presented this wednesday an ambitious and comprehensive plan to reverse the crime that the country faces with the penetration of drug trafficking.

The background of the drug

The expert on security and drug trafficking in Central America, Douglas Farah, from IBI Consultants in Washington, in conversation with the voice of americaexposes the complications for the Central American country, which for some years has become a transit bridge for drug shipments coming from the south at its stops on the route to Mexico, the US and the world.

Farah says that the first stage of the incursion of organized crime in Costa Rica began with “more hidden” cybercrime operations, but little by little it has permeated until it reached the most lethal: drugs, the increase in weapons in the streets, the formation of criminal structures to expedite the passage of shipments, and the most delicate, disputes between cartels.

The good logistical infrastructure of Costa Rica, the advances of the Central American nation with broadband for Internet and the sense of welcoming tourism “being a country very open to tourism” have played against Farah explains.

To this is added the fact that the country does not have an army, so safeguarding internal security falls entirely on the National Police, which has not received foreign cooperation or training to deal with a problem of this magnitude.

“As is known, Costa Rica does not have an army, it has a police force that is not so developed in anti-narcotics matters and with the flood of drugs that have come to them and the phenomenon has been growing, they do not have the capacity to face it on the coast or in the maritime traffic”, explains Douglas Farah.

An article from the analysis center in Washington InSight Crime, detected in 2022 that the violence is focused in regions where there are territorial disputes over the cartels.

InSight Crime considered the province of Limón, in the Atlantic fringe of the country, “the national capital of homicides” as this region registered the highest percentage of deaths due to “the growing flow of cocaine that has resumed disputes over the main port, point of departure of narcotics in the country.

This analysis center also considers that the clashes between criminal gangs and robberies between bosses in the area have raised alerts and forced the authorities to deploy police resources to protect citizens.

“One of the main causes of the violence is the container port of Moín, in Limón, which presents difficulties in containing the flow of cocaine”, last year the authorities intensified the operations and managed to detect about five tons of cocaine in containers with destinations such as the United Kingdom, among other countries.

InSight Crime analyzes that homicide spikes have been increasing after 2017, when the first red alert was presented.

Since that year there have been sporadic outbreaks in Limón as the epicenter and that “stir up an increasingly deep-rooted security crisis, fostered by competition between groups of drug dealers and medium-sized distributors for the income from drug trafficking.”

The mirror of Ecuador

Douglas Farah adds that Costa Rica must face the problem as soon as possible, because there are examples of countries like Ecuador, where organized crime began operating without affecting security, but which today represents an acute problem for the South American country.

“One sees in Ecuador what can happen in Costa Rica, a country historically very calm, without much violence and now has one of the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere with the problem of prisons, violence and not only that. , but rather the entry of international mafias that make it very difficult to face the phenomenon,” says Farah.

However, this expert highlights Costa Rican citizen participation, which continues to be a strong asset to counteract the problem, due to the confidence that exists in the country’s institutions and their capacities.

A factor that must be taken care of as much as possible, he believes, because it has been proven in the region that when organized crime arrives, corruption rates increase due to the huge amounts of resources that it moves and that, after the fact, loses the confidence of citizens in the State.

Inés Poveda told VOA that as a Costa Rican citizen she is aware that working for the security of the country is not only the responsibility of the police, the ministers and the president of the republic, but “of all citizens who must unite to prevent insecurity”.

State powers would strengthen the plan

The administration of President Rodrigo Chaves, when presenting the security strategy this week in the face of the crisis of violence, explained that it is an intense reform where the three powers of State must participate to guarantee the security of citizens and that it be sustainable for the future.

In addition to reinforcing the work with 10,000 police officers, greater investment is sought in the police forces, coordination of efforts throughout the territory and reform of new laws that will be the responsibility of the Legislative Assembly, as well as promoting a “Law on the Extradition of Nationals for Crimes of international drug trafficking and terrorism”, aspects that would have to be aired at the time by the Supreme Court of Justice of the country.

“We want a better Costa Rica for the next generations, and only by fighting crime is we going to achieve it (…) our priority is security, and we are going to focus efforts and resources on achieving it,” President Chaves said when presenting the list of measures that must give results in a period of no more than six months.

A reengineering of the functionality of the police will allow for results in the short term, as well as increase the recruitment of more troops.

“An extraordinary recruitment process will be opened, the Administration had vacant positions that could not be appointed, but the process was modified to speed it up, which will allow the appointment of 400 new police officers in June,” the Government announced.

The list of measures also includes requests for budget reinforcement to the Legislative Assembly to hire some 300 more agents, which would add 700 troops before the end of the year, and with a loan of 5 million dollars, the Command and Control Center will be created of the Central American Region to operate “with state-of-the-art technology” available to the police to combat crime.

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