Drug violence threatens Costa Rica

Three students from a school in the Siquirres municipality, in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica, ended up hospitalized this week after being shot with a 9 millimeter pistol that a hitman used to kill an alleged rival in the drug trafficking business.

It was noon on Monday, time for shift change, with dozens of children and mothers entering or leaving while the murderer only thought about perpetrating the crime that, according to official figures, makes the Central American country almost reach the number of registered violent deaths. in the first 50 days of 2023, which with 907 murders was the bloodiest year in Costa Rican history.

The scene was terrifying, educational staff told the press.

The children and two adults were taken to the hospital, other students expressed that they did not want to return to classes and the school was closed for the rest of the week.

The mayor of the municipality criticized the Government for not granting the police resources that he had requested and now everyone regrets what happened, although almost no one is surprised.

Drug trafficking groups and their violent battles have spread throughout the territory of Costa Rica, the nation that for decades boasted of being the safest in the region.

A murder is no longer news, a shooting in broad daylight is not unusual either and an execution in front of a school has happened before, but last Monday there were children injured by gunshots and this is a tragic novelty for 2024 in the disturbing violent escalation of crime to levels that exceed the capabilities of the State to quell it with current resources and limited police forces.

The threat comes from some 340 criminal organizations that use more than 200 identified hitmen, according to authorities, and that move an amount of millions of dollars enough to disrupt local economies and even cause a sharp drop in the exchange rate, as they suspect. different sectors.

Police establish a checkpoint in an area with a lot of nightlife in San José, in August 2023. Carlos Gonzalez (AP)

A month ago, the Minister of Security, Mario Zamora, admitted that local criminal organizations associated with foreign gangs generate a force that "exceeds the current police model, the administration of Justice and the laws."

He said this, however, coinciding with another news item that marked “a new stage” in the situation of violence in the country, as an agent was murdered in the morning during a police operation against a drug trafficking group in a tourist town called Herradura, in the Puntarenas province (the province with the highest growth in homicides so far in 2024).

From this town on the Pacific coast, days later, the investigative police reported details of an unusual operation: extracting the decomposed remains of four people from a water tank on a private property.

“The violent action of this type of groups is no longer limited to the fight between gangs, it also gives way to a confrontation against the forces of public order,” lamented Minister Zamora, casting doubt on one of the frequent messages of the president, Rodrigo. Chaves.

This, to relativize the insecurity crisis, has insisted that the danger is not high for good people and that "those who are on bad paths kill each other";

He even asks to call the homicides “casualties of combatants in the war between drug traffickers.”

Judicial authorities attribute at least two-thirds of the homicides to the fight between gangs, but the injured schoolchildren in Siquirres, the police officer killed in Herradura, or the 52 people who died in 2023 as collateral victims of murders were not “combatants.”

This data tripled that of 2022, the data verification platform Double Check published on Tuesday, as part of numerous news items that once again addressed the implications of the environment of violence this week.

Some of them included experts giving recommendations on how people should act in the event of a shooting.

“I share this press release that may be useful for us.

It is sad what this country has become,” commented a retired teacher on Tuesday in a WhatsApp group with her neighbors.

Police investigate the scene of a murder in February 2023 in the Costa Rican capital. Carlos Gonzalez (AP)

The insecurity crisis is not something new.

It manifested itself in the last five years, broke out in 2022 and reached a new record in 2023, reaching a figure of 907 homicides and a rate of 17.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, but in 2024 it marks the political discussion on the necessary legal reforms or To what extent drug trafficking has penetrated State institutions or impacts economic indicators that, in turn, affect productive activities.

The authorities report small improvements in homicides in certain areas for a few weeks, but they know that the “cancer” is still there, as President Chaves usually calls it.

In these first months of the year, a debate persists between toughening laws or recovering the diminished social investment, while the president, with his style of struggle, engages in political discussions with other State institutions which he accuses of not doing their job or of hindering.

Amid friction and growing concern among Costa Ricans about organized crime and its effects, the Legislative Assembly dominated by opposition parties is moving forward with a list of legal reforms that aim to increase preventive detention ranges and restrict alternative enforcement measures. of sentencing, measures that some specialists consider insufficient.

The Government has also proposed penalizing minors as if they were adults in cases of hitmen, in addition to allowing the extradition of nationals suspected of drug trafficking, but faces constitutional limits and objections from experts.

Other voices call for a strong hand in the style of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, whom Chaves himself considers a reference in matters of security, but they come up against the institutional design and guarantee tradition of Costa Rica, as well as great differences between fighting gangs gang type and confront drug trafficking gangs with a lot of money, international support and tentacles.

The concern goes beyond the end of the country's pacifist image and the risk that the increase in tourists and investors will be reversed.

Associations of tourism entrepreneurs and exporters of traditional products, such as coffee and bananas, but also of the dynamic technology industry, have raised alerts due to the strong appreciation of the local currency, the colon, in the face of unusual amounts of dollars that have entered in the last two years.

The local value of the dollar has fallen 25% in 18 months and hits producers who receive their income from abroad.

In February, a transnational banana company fired a hundred workers with the argument of the unsustainability of the exchange rate.

A police officer uses his flashlight during an investigative operation in San José, in August 2023. Carlos Gonzalez (AP)

While Chaves maintains that the high influx of foreign currency is a sign of the economic success of his Government, due to the recovery of tourism after the pandemic and the growth of foreign investments and exports, the Central Bank admits that it does not know the origin of 48% of the incoming currencies, since that percentage is in a category that does not require identifying the origin.

That is why starting in March the registry of these placements will be reformed, the Central Bank announced after reiterating that there is no evidence of the participation of money from criminal activities.

However, suspicions remain in different sectors and were expressed last week by a member of the National Council for Supervision of the Financial System (Conassif).

“There could be other transfers that include illicit transactions that are difficult to detect, which could not be estimated, but could be large.

We cannot evade it because we have the dead to prove it,” said economist Sylvia Saborío in a forum on the monetary situation in Costa Rica, together with government authorities.

Analysts such as Álvaro Ramos, former Deputy Minister of Security, and other critical voices blame the authorities for their permissiveness in the face of the threat of money laundering through the exchange system or in activities such as construction, illegal lottery, informal loans and small businesses.

There are groups that fear that a “narco-state” will consolidate in the country that is still classified as an example of democracy and institutional maturity.

The reality of Ecuador is often mentioned.

Chaves responds that his government fights drug trafficking like no other and to do so he intends to install scanners at all border posts, as they already operate at the main port terminal, located in the Caribbean, the launching point for cocaine shipments to Europe.

Thus, he says, he fights the profits of drug trafficking groups, after seizures of drugs and suspicious money fell by half in 2022, in the first year of the current administration, without recovering in 2023.

“It is a country not prepared to face what is coming and not because of ineffectiveness, but because it was not something they expected.

"This meant that the institutions and regulatory frameworks were not prepared for this, unlike countries in the Northern Triangle," said the director of the independent organization Crime Stoppers in a recent interview in the Delfino.cr media, alluding to the legal framework but also to cultural circumstances that were forged in the decades in which Costa Rica saw the urgencies of its Central American neighbors as foreign.

Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on

Facebook

and

X

, or in our

weekly newsletter

.