Costa Rica's Escalating Security Crisis: The New Cartel Battleground

There is a phrase, attributed to Ernest Hemingway, that is often used to describe situations where everything unravels: ‘slowly, then all at once.’ For many, this was the exact way to describe Ecuador’s descent into internal armed conflict at the start of this year. After years of rising homicides, burgeoning corruption, and the growing influence of gangs, the security environment collapsed all at once.

Homicides, which had stood at a mere five per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, spiked to 46 per 100,000, reaching a level comparable with Haiti. On January 9th, cartels attacked television studios, universities, and even hospitals. Although the government quickly regained control, parts of the country have remained under a state of emergency ever since.

The run-up to Ecuador’s descent, while slow, was highly visible. Those paying attention could feel a major shift was coming, even as the rest of the world still thought of the country as a South American oasis.

The Mexicanization of Costa Rica’s Gang Culture

There is now another Latin American country that may be in the ‘slowly’ part of its own disaster. Sitting 1,200 kilometers north of Ecuador is another nation that was long considered safe, but which is now coping with its own spikes of murders and corruption. While so far nowhere near declaring an internal armed conflict, Costa Rica is falling victim to the same dark forces that recently overwhelmed Ecuador.

For those used to picturing Costa Rica as a land of ecotourism, yoga retreats, and sloths, the idea that it is in danger of being overrun by cartels may seem absurd. However, the underlying security metrics reveal a troubling reality. After decades as one of Latin America’s least-violent nations, Costa Rica now experiences more homicides per 100,000 residents than Guatemala, and only slightly fewer than Brazil.

The year 2023 recorded a historic high of 17.2 murders per 100,000 people, representing a 38 percent increase from what was already a concerning spike the year before. At the same time, corruption cases involving the judiciary are growing at an alarming rate, alongside rising rates of addiction among ordinary citizens. The New York Times reported that the nation is facing an addiction crisis unlike anything it has ever dealt with before.

This development may simply feel like part of a wider Caribbean story, one that is being replicated in nations from Jamaica to St. Kitts and Nevis amid a post-pandemic wave of skyrocketing murder rates and local gang conflicts. Yet, this ignores the specific nature of Costa Rica’s growing crisis, which mixes rising crime statistics with lurid displays of over-the-top violence.

The New York Times described a recent rash of crimes where schools are becoming crime scenes, with parents gunned down while dropping their children off. Plastic bags filled with severed limbs have been discovered in parks, and a patient was recently shot dead inside a hospital by members of a rival gang. Adding to the escalation are direct threats being sent to lawmakers.

One email sent to Legislative Assembly Deputy Andrea Álvarez in October declared an intent to shoot at the Legislative Assembly with AR-15 rifles and kill her in her office, threatening to storm Congress and unleash gunfire. Whether or not anyone intended to follow through with the threat, the fact that it was deemed even remotely credible represents a terrifying shift. It fits the operational patterns of gangs in nations like Ecuador and Mexico, where theatrical displays of violence serve as a form of intimidation.

The Costa Rican Minister of Public Security has referred to this phenomenon as the ‘Mexicanization’ of local gang culture.

Transnational Cartels and Vulnerable Infrastructure

The driving force behind this grotesque gang culture infecting a small Central American nation of just over 5 million people is the international appetite for cocaine. Ecuador’s descent happened for myriad reasons, but a major factor was that transnational cartels wanted to utilize its laxly guarded ports to ship cocaine directly to Europe. Costa Rica’s port security is similarly nearly non-existent.

Just one year after the new Moín container port opened near the Caribbean city of Limón, Insight Crime reported that it became the favored departure point for cocaine shipments bound for Europe. Although Mexico remains the world’s primary transshipment point for the drug, Costa Rica is rapidly catching up, and in 2020, it even managed to briefly overtake its northern neighbor. Part of this shift relates to the current logistical models employed by major cartels.

Reports document how Colombia’s Gulf Clan sends its shipments via the Pacific Ocean, thereby requiring a convenient transit country across which narcotics can be carried to the Caribbean, and onward to lucrative European markets. This geographic vulnerability is compounded by Costa Rica’s systemic lack of a robust security apparatus. San Jose famously abolished its military in 1948.

While the state still maintains a police force, personnel numbers stand at a mere 15,000 officers, which is barely half the force size of similarly sized Panama. Geopolitical Monitor notes that this lack of a formal military makes Costa Rica highly attractive to traffickers who face less formidable resistance in asserting territorial control. While the country is moving quickly to recruit 1,500 new police officers, this figure falls far short of the extra 5,000 personnel that security experts believe are required to effectively police the entire nation.

Even if those recruitment goals were met immediately, the illicit syndicates are already growing significantly in strength and organizational capacity. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has identified up to 340 distinct criminal organizations currently operating within Costa Rica. According to the head of the country’s Judicial Investigation Department, Randall Zúñiga, these groups collectively comprise approximately 5,000 active gang members.

While many of these members are exceptionally young, with some reported to be a mere 13 years old, they are increasingly backed by sophisticated transnational networks. Alongside Colombia’s Gulf Clan, the most prominent external players appear to be Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. For anyone who tracked the rapid evolution of Ecuador’s security crisis, the involvement of these specific organizations follows a predictable and dangerous pattern.

Funding, Recruitment, and Socioeconomic Drivers

A critical factor in the rapid empowerment of local gangs in previous regional crises was the arrival of well-funded Mexican, Colombian, and Albanian cartels. These transnational entities backed local factions not just with staggering amounts of money, but also with highly potent weaponry. A nearly identical narrative is currently playing out in Costa Rica.

The major cartels are contracting Costa Rica’s once small-time criminals to execute their logistical and enforcement operations, while providing the capital and operational sophistication necessary to help them evolve into serious fighting forces. Geopolitical Monitor claims that these better-funded syndicates are already expanding their operations beyond drug running and diversifying into human trafficking and contract killings. However, an influx of illicit arms and cartel money cannot entirely account for the sudden, drastic spike in lethal violence.

Advanced European nations like Sweden are also grappling with spiraling gang crime and the influence of transnational cartels, yet its homicide rate stood at just 1.15 per 100,000 in 2023. This translated to only 124 murders last year, compared to over 900 recorded in Costa Rica. This disparity highlights a critical vulnerability within Costa Rican society itself.

One prominent school of thought cites the socio-economic hangover from the pandemic, which caused a sharp spike in unemployment and fanned the flames of latent social discontent across the country. The Costa Rican Times quoted Randall Zúñiga explaining that many young people dropped out of school during the pandemic and have subsequently become easy targets for recruitment by these criminal organizations. Other outlets, such as The New Humanitarian, have pointed to severe reductions in the national budget for public education over recent years.

Analysts suggest these financial cuts have directly helped fuel the unnerving 24.2 percent unemployment rate among citizens aged 15 to 24. The complete truth is likely a convergence of these systemic failures. High unemployment and a structural lack of opportunities to escape poverty among young men have traditionally served as primary drivers of social discontent in the region.

When this economic reality is combined with a political class that currently appears paralyzed by internal friction, and a prevailing public sentiment that the national elites have removed the ladders to social mobility, the appeal of gang life becomes evident. The fast money and localized respect that criminal organizations offer present a highly attractive alternative to disenfranchised youth.

Institutional Resilience and Future Implications

Despite the reality that Costa Rica is being battered by the exact same forces that pushed Ecuador to the brink of state failure, a total collapse is not a certainty. San Jose possesses several critical institutional advantages that may help maintain state stability despite the ongoing cartel onslaught. In a recent analysis, Insight Crime highlighted several of these structural advantages, with the most significant being a historical lack of systemic corruption and a prison system that still functions effectively.

Unlike Ecuador, corruption has yet to become widespread and deeply rooted within Costa Rica’s core governance structures. In its 2023 Perceptions of Corruption Index, Transparency International placed San Jose 45th out of 180 countries, putting it roughly on par with the Czech Republic. Ecuador, by stark contrast, ranked joint-115th, alongside Turkey and Indonesia, and only marginally ahead of Angola.

This relatively clean institutional baseline means the cartels will find it significantly harder to capture high-level public institutions, or even to accomplish mundane operational tasks like consistently bribing local police officers. Furthermore, the cartels do not possess the same captive recruitment pool that organizations like Los Choneros utilized so effectively in Ecuador. In the Ecuadorian collapse, the national prison system became so profoundly corrupted and understaffed that local gangs seized control of the facilities entirely, transforming them into personal fiefdoms from which they could recruit members and orchestrate external crimes at will.

One of the most glaring early indicators of the impending catastrophe in Ecuador was the escalating frequency of massive prison massacres. In Costa Rica, however, the state maintains operational control over its penitentiaries, effectively neutralizing one of the primary recruitment and command nodes typically leveraged by criminal organizations. While this institutional resilience provides a buffer against immediate collapse, it leaves a major strategic question unanswered regarding how the government can proactively reverse the rising tide of violence.

President Rodrigo Chaves and Security Minister Jorge Torres have firmly advocated for implementing a security model modeled after the uncompromising crackdowns pioneered by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. However, while Bukele operates with a highly pliant legislature and judiciary, Costa Rica’s political landscape is far too fractious to coordinate such sweeping authoritarian measures, as evidenced by the Legislative Assembly recently rejecting President Chaves’ attempts to introduce El Salvador-style policies. Consequently, the government is restricted to less drastic, incremental actions.

There are emerging signs that these localized interventions may be having a measurable impact. The United States recently donated four cargo drug scanners for installation in Costa Rica’s ports to intercept contraband, and the government plans to procure additional units. Financial resources are being redirected into the police force to support a new wave of recruitment, while non-governmental organizations are working to provide alternative community programs for young men in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The results show cautious promise; unlike Ecuador in 2023, Costa Rica has not seen its homicide rate explode further in 2024. The government reports that murders are fractionally down by 3 percent compared to the same period in 2023. Nevertheless, the nation is still facing historically high levels of violence that may prove economically unsustainable for a country heavily dependent on tourism.

Costa Rica does not currently appear to be on the verge of collapsing into total gang warfare, but averting disaster will require immense national willpower to step back from the abyss.

Sources

1. https://insightcrime.org/news/costa-rica-ecuador-criminal/
2. https://insightcrime.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/InSight-Crimes-2023-Homicide-Round-Up-Feb-2024-2.pdf
3. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/a-crackdown-in-the-making-cartel-violence-in-costa-rica/
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/world/americas/costa-rica-drug-trafficking.html
5. https://www.csis.org/analysis/burgeoning-regional-appeal-mano-dura-crime-fighting-strategies
6. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2024/08/28/costa-rica-education-blackout-fuels-gang-violence-dims-children-hopes
7. https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-10-23/death-threats-and-drug-trafficking-suspicions-political-tension-rises-in-costa-rica.html
8. https://www.costaricantimes.com/crime-and-corruption-in-costa-rica-is-paradise-in-peril/79100