Costa Rica, considered for decades a peaceful enclave in turbulent Central America, has now made fighting drug trafficking one of its main goals.
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fighting → consider → goals
And it is turning to one of its Central American neighbors for inspiration in its hardline crackdown.
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it → turn → crackdown
On Wednesday, President Laura Fernández inaugurated a mega-prison that emulates the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) that has become a symbol of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s security strategy.
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that → inaugurate → strategy
Bukele has managed to reduce murders to a historic low in El Salvador but faces accusations of abuses during the state of emergency that began in 2022 and has imprisoned more than 91,000 people.
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that → manage → people
Costa Rica is not the first to turn its attention to the man who has proclaimed himself the “coolest dictator in the world.”
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himself → turn → world
Ecuador has done it.
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Ecuador → do → it
So have the new presidents of Peru and Colombia.
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presidents → have → Peru
From Honduras to the Southern Cone, these countries are joining the hardline security strategy also endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
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countries → join → Trump
Now, Costa Rica says it will incarcerate its most dangerous criminals in the High-Containment Center against Organized Crime, with a capacity for 5,100 inmates and a cost of $35 million.
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it → say → million
Here’s how the country that was once the region’s most stable got here.
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that → ’ → ?
The cocaine route to Europe
For decades, Costa Rica was a “passive” transit zone for drugs from South America, according to the organization Insight Crime.
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Rica → accord → organization
But without an army, and with extensive jungle and ports on both coasts, it began to attract Mexican and Colombian cartels.
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it → begin → cartels
At the end of the last decade, a new cargo terminal transformed the Caribbean port of Limón into a storage and transshipment point for cocaine destined for Europe, according to the U.S. State Department, which, in a 2025 report, also detected fentanyl distribution in the Central American country.
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which → transform → country
Now, the two major Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, are present in the country, as are the Colombian Clan del Golfo, the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua — all considered terrorist organizations by the United States — and Italian mafias, while local cartels proliferate, explained Vanda Felbab-Brown, an organized crime researcher at the Brookings Institution.
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Brown → consider → Institution
Homicides raise alarms
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Homicides → raise → alarms
The cartels’ interest in new routes and the rivalry between the two major Mexican cartels “pushed local proxies to fight with each other and then drove homicides up” in Costa Rica, Felbab-Brown noted.
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Brown → push → Rica
Payments to these gangs in drugs developed local markets that further increased the violence, and the authorities felt overwhelmed.
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authorities → develop → violence
The alarm was raised in 2023 when the country registered a record 907 homicides — a figure that has decreased, but only slightly — and the government acknowledged that they were mostly due to organized crime.
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they → raise → crime
Insecurity, although far from that of Ecuador or Mexico, became the biggest concern for Costa Ricans and was a key factor in Fernández’s election.
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Insecurity → become → election
It was then that Fernández’s predecessor, Rodrigo Chaves, sought out Bukele, whose success in cutting down killings have led his counterparts in the region to turn to him for inspiration on security policy.
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success → seek → policy
Chaves bestowed him with a diplomatic honor, and sent his security minister to visit the CECOT.
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Chaves → bestow → CECOT
The Salvadoran president, in turn, donated the design for the prison to the Costa Rican government.
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president → donate → government
The CECOT has become a symbol of Bukele’s security policy and is increasingly being imitated.
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CECOT → become → policy
Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa opened a similar prison last year.
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Noboa → open → prison
Honduras planned something similar on an island, though it has not yet been built.
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it → plan → island
And Peru’s Keiko Fujimori has just announced a trip to El Salvador in response to the rise in homicides and extortion.
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Fujimori → announce → homicides
The measures tend to be popular, and a large portion of the Costa Rican population supports the new mega-prison.
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portion → tend → prison
“Many people are afraid,” said Carlos Ávila, a business administrator.
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Ávila → say → ?
“I think it’s good that they’re building a prison and isolating the criminals.
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they → think → criminals
But it remains to be seen how criminal gangs and society will react to Costa Rica’s new prison, said Felbab-Brown.
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Brown → remain → prison
“Orchestrating mass arrests at the scale that we see in El Salvador might be both politically unpopular (in Costa Rica) and opposed and challenged also in terms of intelligence,” she said.
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she → orchestrate → intelligence
Extraditions, the other way to fight crime
Chaves opted for another tool against crime: in 2025, he carried out a constitutional reform to allow Costa Ricans to be extradited for drug trafficking and terrorism offenses.
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Ricans → fight → trafficking
In March of this year, the first extraditions to the United States took place, including that of Celso Gamboa, former security minister and Supreme Court justice, accused of drug trafficking.
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extraditions → take → trafficking
In recent months there have been high-profile arrests, such as that of Alejandro Arias Monge, alias “Diablo,” the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, and the president announced investigations into two hundred police officers.
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president → announce → officers
Meanwhile, Costa Rica remains a staunch ally of Trump, with agreements to receive deported migrants and participation in the Shield of the Americas, which involves maritime patrols.
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which → remain → patrols
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Verza reported from Mexico City.
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Verza → report → City
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