Narco violence dominates as Costa Rica votes for president
Costa Rica, a symbol of stability in Central America struggling with a rise in drug-trafficking-related violence, goes to the polls on Sunday for elections expected to bring a tough-on-crime right-winger to power.
Laura Fernandez, the 39-year-old candidate of the party of outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves, is one of the favorites to become the next leader of the country, which is flocked by tourists, especially from the USA, due to its beaches.
Polls showed Fernandez, inspired by the iron-fisted president of nearby El Salvador, could get the 40 percent of the votes needed to win outright, avoiding a runoff with any of his 19 rivals.
A former minister and chief of staff to outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves, he is hoping for major success in the legislative elections.
His popularity is tied to that of Chaves, who has evaded the rise in the murder rate (the number of murders on his watch has risen 50 percent to 17 per 100,000 people in the past six years) by blaming the judiciary.
Fernandez reiterated his claim that judges often release criminals.
“We will win in the first round and we will achieve this with 40 seats in parliament!” At the end of his campaign, Fernandez made a statement calling for an overhaul of the judiciary, citing the number of seats in the 57-seat Legislative Assembly.
“I like Laura because she’s close to the president. There’s a lot of theft going on here, a lot of kids selling drugs,” Jessenia Ordonez, who lives in San Jose’s crime-ridden Alajuelita neighborhood, told AFP.
– Cocaine trafficking center –
Costa Rica, a country of 5.2 million people, has transformed from a transit point for cocaine shipments into a logistics hub infiltrated by Mexican and Colombian cartels, according to officials.
The trade has spread to the high-density “precariats” (informal settlements) of cities like San Jose, where clashes between rival drug gangs are increasingly common.
Fernandez has vowed to complete construction of a maximum security prison modeled on Bukele’s brutal CECOT prison.
He also promised to toughen prison sentences and impose a state of emergency in areas hit hardest by crime.
Fernandez served as both planning minister and presidential private secretary under Trump ally Chaves.
In 2025, Chaves blocked Chinese companies from operating Costa Rica’s 5G network due to espionage risks highlighted by Washington.
– Switzerland or El Salvador –
Fernandez’s victory would confirm the right-wing trend in Latin America, where left-wing parties in Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Honduras lost elections on issues such as corruption and organized crime.
Opponents liken the confrontational style of Fernandez and Chavez, who are constitutionally barred from re-election, to that of Bukele and US President Donald Trump.
Bukele is a hero to many in Latin America and is credited with restoring security to a nation traumatized by crime.
As part of its war against gangs, it has detained more than 90,000 people, most of them innocent or minors, since March 2022, according to human rights groups.
Approximately 8,000 of those arrested were later released.
“When did we go from dreaming of being the Switzerland of Central America to dreaming of being El Salvador?” Left-leaning presidential chair Ariel Robles, who is in second place just behind Fernandez, asked this question during the campaign.
Another candidate, centrist economist Alvaro Ramos, warned that “modern dictatorships do not always come with tanks.”
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