Costa Rica’s Broken Halo: Crime, Fear, and a High-Stakes Election

Costa Rica once sold the world a simple promise: safety in a region defined by turmoil. Now assassinations, cartel rivalries, and political scandals are tightening around a February election that could redefine the country’s identity—and test how much danger its democracy can absorb.

The Haven That No Longer Feels Safe

Costa Rica’s narrative, for many generations, has been a mild foil to the drama of the rest of Central America. It abolished its army, and it built schools and parks. It was the exception to the coup, the rebellion, the chronic instability that seemed to mark every republic to its south. After 9/11, that civic humility hardened into marketing. Tour operators, billboards, government campaigns—they all murmured the same soporific line: Come here, because here you are safe.

The storyline is buckling now. Drug cartels, which had previously treated Costa Rica as a discreet corridor, have awakened to the country’s actual value: good ports, low-traffic roads, and the institutional tranquility that makes contraband easier to conceal. Contract killings arrive in towns that were once “nothing-happens” towns. Sidewalks fall prey to stray bullets that never used to make it that far north.

Then there was the bombshell that made the rumor feel true. In June, Celso Gamboa, a former security minister, was arrested on drug-trafficking charges. The case is now braided with a campaign for U.S. extradition, taking advantage of Costa Rica’s new constitutional reform. People had always murmured suspicions—the scent of something like this. Someone at the top, they said, is involved. Now, someone had a name, a face, and a legal file.

Fear deepened when retired Nicaraguan army major Roberto Samcam Ruiz—an outspoken critic of Daniel Ortega—was gunned down. Since 2018, roughly 317,000 Nicaraguans have fled to Costa Rica, about 55% of all Nicaraguan refugees worldwide. Their hopes rested on Costa Rica’s reputation for refuge. Samcam’s murder jolted that faith.

By August, even the presidency felt less untouchable. Lawmakers weighed suspending President Rodrigo Chaves’ immunity so he could face trial in a case tied to financing from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. They fell short of the two-thirds vote required. Chaves denies wrongdoing. But the spectacle—the image of deputies deliberating whether to strip a sitting president’s shield—captured something more profound: an era of certainties giving way to an era of exposure.

Numbers That Shatter the Myth

The unraveling isn’t just about atmosphere. It shows up bluntly in statistics.

Costa Rica hit a then-record 603 homicides in 2017. By 2023, that number reached 907, the highest in its modern history. The number dipped slightly last year, but the country still outpaced Guatemala and Panama in violence—a stunning reversal of its old identity.

Behind those numbers lies a criminal landscape mutating at remarkable speed. Security Minister Mario Zamora has warned that Costa Rica has leapt from 35 criminal groups a decade ago to roughly 340 today, according to figures cited by Americas Quarterly. These are no longer shadowy intermediaries. They are territorial groups, extorting, recruiting, fighting for corners, dragging teenagers into cycles that end in coffins.

The state’s answer has been to tighten the screws. Costa Rica’s incarceration rate jumped from 282 prisoners per 100,000 residents in 2022 to 359 today. Cells overflow, budgets strain, and nightly broadcasts glow with police raids. Yet the fear persists.

Former President Laura Chinchilla was direct when she spoke before a legislative commission. “Today’s security crisis is real,” she warned, and “the current administration is primarily responsible,” according to Americas Quarterly. Her point was sharp: geography explains some things, but political decisions explain more.

One of those decisions has been to let Costa Rica’s social strength erode. For decades, the country’s real defense system wasn’t military—it was education, health care, and neighborhood programs that gave families stability and gave youth alternatives. That buffer is now thinning. Social spending has fallen from 24.2% of GDP in 2020 to 20.7% in 2024, the lowest in ten years. As inequality widens and coordination falters, criminal groups fill the gaps.

Rodrigo Chaves and the Politics of Fear

At the center of this storm is a president who remains surprisingly popular. A University of Costa Rica poll found that crime, drug trafficking, and organized crime now top the national list of worries—above education, health, and corruption. Seven in ten respondents said security had worsened in the last year.

Yet Rodrigo Chaves’ personal approval hovers above 50%, hitting 63% in October 2025, according to CIEP-UCR. Analysts quoted by Americas Quarterly describe him as a leader who thrives on confrontation—one who paints himself as the fighter taking on media enemies and elite institutions.

That contradiction defines the election taking shape. Chaves cannot run, but his protégé, former minister Laura Fernández, leads the field with about 25% support. The larger number is the one behind it: roughly 55% of voters remain undecided. Many may like the idea of an authoritarian leader, while doubting that anyone can fully control the violence now underway.

One of the most evident signs of the shift may have been in August, when Chávez signed off on a plan to construct a vast maximum-security prison inspired by El Salvador’s CECOT—the linchpin of President Nayib Bukele’s gang crackdown. The message was hard to miss. A country that had once taken pride in its more humane approach was edging closer to a more punitive vision of order.

Whether that turn feels like necessary protection or a betrayal of Costa Rica’s values may define the election far more than party labels. It may represent the country for years to come.

Refuge, Responsibility and the Road Back

Few moments expose Costa Rica’s dilemma more starkly than the killing of Roberto Samcam.

Randall Zúñiga, head of the Judicial Investigation Agency, has described the murder as premeditated, noting possible links to actors connected to Nicaragua’s Ortega regime. Four suspects have been arrested. Attorney General Carlo Díaz has not ruled out a political motive.

Suppose prosecutors determine that Samcam was killed for his dissent. In that case, human rights experts argue that Costa Rica could be found responsible for failing to protect him—an outcome that would wound not just its reputation but its self-image.

Yet the Chaves administration has remained silent, declining to address the case publicly. As Americas Quarterly reported, insiders cite fears of provoking Managua, worries about compromising the investigation, and Chaves’ own vulnerability amid corruption probes.

Legislators, recognizing the stakes, have launched their own inquiry.

This is where Costa Rica now stands: a country that wants to protect refugees but fears angering neighbors; a government determined to confront crime but reluctant to rebuild the social model that once kept it exceptional.

The tools on the table point in different directions. An updated extradition system. A mega-prison. Aggressive raids. Shrinking social programs.

What voters decide in February will reveal whether Costa Rica chooses the quick promise of force, the slower road of institutional repair, or some uncertain combination of both.

Experts interviewed by Americas Quarterly warn that public patience is thinning. Costa Rica has always been an outlier—a nation that built security not on fear but on inclusion. Its broken halo can be restored, they say, but only if leaders resist the temptation to trade values for spectacle and remember the quiet infrastructure that once made the country feel like an exception worth believing in.

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