Costa Rican Border Police agents patrolling a rainforest in Sierpe, Costa Rica. Costa Rica’s lush rainforests, which blanket a quarter of the country, are being infiltrated by cartels on a quest to find new trafficking routes to evade the authorities. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
CHRISTIAN Puchi strapped on his machete, made sure his team was doused in mosquito repellent and prepared for another day patrolling the rainforest.
Once conservationists tracking jaguars and turtles, these forest rangers now face a new and far more dangerous threat: violent drug cartels.
Costa Rica, once a peaceful haven attracting nature lovers, is now on the front lines of the drug trade.
Drug cartels, seeking new trafficking routes, have turned its lush national parks into drug warehouses.
Puchi and his fellow rangers, working with limited staff and equipment, are overwhelmed.
“We used to focus on conservation – now we deal with traffickers,” says Puchi, a 20-year forest ranger.
A rising threat
Costa Rica’s rise in drug trafficking has been swift. By 2020, it became the world’s leading transshipment point for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe, surpassing even Mexico.
Though Mexico has since regained the top spot, Costa Rica remains a crucial link in the global drug supply chain. This shift has triggered an explosion of violence.
Homicides surged by 53% from 2020 to 2023. Local gangs, aligned with Mexican cartels like Sinaloa and Jalisco, now fight for control of trafficking routes.
As a result, even schools have become crime scenes, with parents gunned down during drop-offs and dismembered bodies appearing in public parks.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Mario Zamora, Costa Rica’s minister of public security. “It’s the Mexicanisation of violence.”
A police officer holding a bag of several doses of drugs in Limon. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
National parks on the frontline
Costa Rica’s national parks, once safe havens for wildlife, have become battlegrounds in this drug war.
Traffickers use the country’s dense rainforests and mangroves to smuggle drugs inland, mostly cocaine coming from Colombia.
Around 70% of the drugs entering Costa Rica do so through its Pacific coastline, where they are then transported to other parts of the country.
However, the rangers tasked with protecting the country’s 1.3 million hectares of national parks are ill-equipped for this new reality.
Armed with nothing more than hunting rifles, they patrol vast areas where traffickers wield automatic weapons and even rocket-propelled grenades.
The rangers have no power to make arrests and lack essential resources, such as proper communication tools. One team uses a single phone, propped up by logs, hoping for a signal.
At night, the rangers are often disturbed by the sound of low-flying planes and helicopters landing in the forests, dropping off illicit cargo.
“We’re powerless to stop them,” says Miguel Aguilar, who leads a ranger team in Tortuguero National Park, patrolling 32,000ha of rainforest.
Growing sophistication
As drug trafficking expands, so does its sophistication.
Costa Rican authorities recently uncovered a criminal operation using scuba divers to attach hulls filled with cocaine to the bottoms of ships.
Traffickers have also developed methods to convert cocaine into liquid form, hiding it in soda bottles destined for Europe and the Middle East.
The discovery of the country’s first fentanyl laboratory in 2023 has further alarmed authorities. While fentanyl hasn’t yet flooded Costa Rica’s streets, officials fear it’s only a matter of time.
Rob Alter, from the US Embassy’s Bureau for International Narcotics, notes Costa Rica’s growing importance as a hub for both cocaine and fentanyl trafficking, making it a target for cartels seeking new markets.
Three men raising their hands against the wall during a drug search by the police in Limon, Costa Rica. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
A nation without a military
Without a military, Costa Rica relies on its national police force, which numbers just 15,000 officers for a population of 5.2 million. The government has increased the police budget, but the scale of the problem is overwhelming.
In comparison, nearby Panama has nearly twice as many officers for a smaller population. Ground zero for the drug war is Limón, Costa Rica’s largest port and the epicentre of the country’s booming fruit export industry.
Limón has also become a hub for cocaine exports, with local gangs fighting to control the port’s drug trade. Violence has exploded in the city, now home to the highest murder rates in the country.
In Limón, cartels use fruit warehouses as fronts to store cocaine and launder money. The port’s high volume of exports – bananas and pineapples, primarily – makes thorough security checks nearly impossible, allowing cartels to smuggle drugs with ease.
Adapting to survive
In response, Costa Rica’s park rangers are now partnering with the police. These joint operations are the first time that rangers, who report to the ministry of environment, have worked alongside law enforcement.
“It’s a relationship born out of necessity,” says Franz Tattenbach, Costa Rica’s minister of environment. “The threat has changed, and we have to adapt.”
On a recent operation, rangers and border police moved through the mangroves together, scanning for signs of illegal activity. Their equipment – a mix of bulletproof vests and life jackets – reflects their makeshift adaptation to the drug war.
Though understaffed and under- resourced, they remain dedicated to protecting Costa Rica’s natural beauty, even as the battle against cartels grows more intense.
For Puchi and his team, survival is now the goal: “We just hope to come back alive.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
