How a tourist paradise became a magnet for drug trafficking

Before heading out to work in the rainforest, Christian Puchi strapped his machete to his hip and sprayed his fellow foresters with mosquito repellent. Then they jumped into their boat and navigated through the hordes of tourists already on the water.

The tourists held their binoculars, hoping to catch a glimpse of Costa Rica's famous turtles. Mr. Puchi and his men just hoped to return unharmed.

They can cope with poisonous frogs, snakes and crocodiles. But with too few staff and inadequate equipment, they are unable to cope with the greatest threat currently lurking in the national parks: the violent drug cartels.

“We used to focus on conservation, looking for jaguar tracks, turtle nests and normal things. Today, nature reserves like this have become medicine warehouses,” says Puchi, 49, who has worked as a forest ranger for over 20 years.

Often considered one of the region's most idyllic destinations, Costa Rica has long been spared the plague of cartels that has permeated the region. The national motto of “pura vida,” or “pure life,” has attracted honeymooners, yoga retreat guests, and birdwatchers for decades.

But now drug cartels are invading the lush forests that cover a quarter of Costa Rica, looking for new smuggling routes to evade authorities.

Costa Rica overtook Mexico to become the world's largest transit point for cocaine bound for the United States, Europe and beyond in 2020, the U.S. State Department said. Mexico returned to the top spot last year, but Costa Rica remains close behind.

And with the increasing drug trafficking, the country has been hit by a wave of violence.

According to government figures, the number of murders in Costa Rica rose by 53 percent between 2020 and 2023. The same is happening in neighboring Caribbean countries. The rising murder rates are a result of competition between gangs in drug markets, the United Nations said in 2023.

In Costa Rica, schools are turning into crime scenes: parents are being gunned down while taking their children to school. Plastic bags full of severed limbs have been discovered in parks. Recently, a patient was shot dead in a hospital by members of a rival gang.

Local gangs fight for control of the routes within the country. It is a competition of greed and ruthlessness to become the local force of the rival Mexican criminal gangs that operate here, mostly the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.

“There used to be a border here, people were not killed indiscriminately,” said Mario Zamora Cordero, Costa Rica's Minister of Public Security, in an interview. “What we are experiencing now is something we have never seen before. It is the Mexicanization of violence to provoke terror and panic.”

“No power to do anything about it”

The gangs’ drug dealing is relatively straightforward.

Colombia's Gulf Clan, the country's largest drug cartel, smuggles cocaine in primitive submarines across the Pacific to Costa Rica's forested shores, American and Costa Rican officials say.

The drug traffickers then use dense mangrove forests, which are intertwined with river channels and rainforests, as a gateway into the country. Around 70 percent of all drugs that enter Costa Rica come via the Pacific coast, according to the country's coast guard.

Much of the cocaine is then transported overland by local groups working with Mexican cartels to a port on the country's east coast, where it is packaged into fruit exports for foreign countries.

Costa Rica seized 21 tonnes of cocaine last year, although Mr Zamora said hundreds of tonnes were smuggled through the country undetected each year.

It is not just cocaine that worries the Costa Rican authorities. Fentanyl is also on the rise.

In November, Costa Rica's first fentanyl laboratory was discovered and destroyed by local police in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Many of the seized fentanyl pills were destined for the United States and Europe, according to a U.S. cable from the embassy in the capital, San José, obtained by the New York Times.

“Costa Rica is a prime target for cartels looking for new markets for fentanyl,” said the cable marked “sensitive” and sent to Washington last year. The organizations are determined to “transform Costa Rica into a new hub.”

Rob Alter, director of the U.S. Embassy's Office of International Drug and Law Enforcement Affairs, said in a statement that Costa Rica, like many other countries in the region, “remains a strong and consistent partner of the United States despite significant security challenges posed by international drug trafficking.”

Costa Rica is one of the few countries in Latin America without a military, so Zamora, the public security minister, is pushing to expand the national police force, which numbers around 15,000 men for a population of 5.2 million. (Neighboring Panama has a police force of 29,000 for 4.4 million people.) His ministry finally received a 12 percent budget increase in 2024, after facing cuts over the past five years.

But ground zero of the drug war is the national parks, where sloths fall from the trees, jaguars roam, and macaws circle overhead. The cartels encounter little resistance there.

Nearly 300 park rangers are responsible for monitoring 1.2 million hectares of protected forest. They are equipped with weapons that are more suitable for hunting small animals than for dealing with the automatic machine guns and anti-tank grenades used by smugglers. And park rangers do not have the authority to make arrests.

The challenges they face are enormous. The nearest urban centre is about an hour away by boat. Phone reception is weak or non-existent. On a recent visit, the team's only mobile phone – which people call to report suspicious activity – was hung on a pile of logs in the hope of receiving a signal.

At night, rangers are awakened several times a month by low-flying planes and helicopters landing illegally in the forest. “We have no power to do anything about it,” says Miguel Aguilar Badilla, who leads a team that patrols 30,000 hectares in Tortuguero National Park.

In July, Mr. Aguílar and his team were chugging through the canals on a boat patrol, venturing deeper into the rainforest, when they came across a fishing boat and asked for their permits.

“I've been trying to call you since yesterday,” said a fisherman, explaining that he had seen some armed men in the rainforest. “Nobody answered.”

“We haven't had reception for a few days,” said Mr. Aguilar. “If we ever have any again.”

“Mexico is no longer the most important player”

About 65 kilometers south of the park lies the seaport of Moín in the city of Limón. As Costa Rica's largest port, it has helped the country meet booming demand for pineapples and bananas from the United States and Europe – the main cocaine exporting countries.

Because of the port's lucrative opportunities, violence in Limón has exploded as local gangs allied with Mexican cartels compete for territory. Limón now has the highest rate of violence in the country.

The Moín seaport opened in 2019. Just one year later, Costa Rica became the world's largest transshipment point for cocaine.

Mexican and Colombian drug cartels now use fruit warehouses in Limón to store their drugs, ship containers of cocaine abroad and launder their money through farms, Costa Rican authorities say. The fruit can easily bruise and is difficult to sort through security checks. As a result, the fruit must be transported quickly before it rots, putting pressure on ports to process shipments quickly.

“The world is a logistical puzzle and the narcos are experts in logistics,” said Zamora. And the dealers always seemed to be one step ahead of them.

Costa Rican authorities recently discovered that criminal gangs were hiring divers to weld underwater hulls to the bottom of ships that could carry up to 1.5 tons of cocaine. Authorities also discovered that local dealers were smuggling soda bottles filled with cocaine in liquid form to Europe and the Middle East.

Randall Zuñiga, director of the Judicial Investigation Bureau, Costa Rica's equivalent of the FBI, said the discovery of the liquid cocaine had terrified authorities and was a sign of the increasing sophistication of the country's dealers.

“In the past, drug traffickers focused on bringing drugs into Mexico to then bring them to the United States,” Zuñiga said. “But Mexico is no longer the main player because Costa Rica is a bridge to Europe, which is now flooded with cocaine.”

“We have to adapt”

In a recent joint operation between park rangers and Costa Rican border patrol agents, officers donned bulletproof vests and multiple life jackets over them, and their boats – donated by the United States – plowed through the calm waters of a river channel, searching mangroves for signs of suspicious activity.

As the captains shut down the engines to drift ashore, the officers jumped from the deck and quickly sank with their boots in a foot of mud. The men languished in the humidity that enveloped them in a thick layer of tropical heat as they patrolled the forest.

As part of this joint operational unit, the country's park rangers, who report to the Ministry of Environment and Energy, are working together with the police for the first time and sharing their knowledge of the difficult terrain.

“It is a relationship that arose out of necessity,” said Franz Tattenbach, Minister for the Environment and Energy, in an interview. “The threat has changed and we must adapt.”

The force's joint efforts are supported by the Costa Rican Coast Guard at an outpost about 50 miles to the south. The Coast Guard patrols the Pacific and intercepts suspicious boats by racing into them at full speed in rough seas.

Costa Rican authorities are concerned not only about the drug's transport to the port of Moín, but also about domestic consumption. The country is facing an addiction crisis the likes of which has never been seen before.

Nowhere is the crisis as acute as in the port city of Limón. Police officials say the streets are flooded with crack.

New York Times journalists accompanied police on a night patrol as they set up random checkpoints in the streets to search for drugs and illegal weapons.

On one occasion, police raided a huge slum, running through alleys barely wide enough for a stroller in the tropical rain.

They entered a drug den, woke the residents from a deep, drug-induced sleep, and lined them up against the walls of a poorly constructed labyrinth of rooms.

A woman leaned against the wall. She sighed and closed her eyes as an officer frisked her and asked for her ID. Another officer said she was a repeat offender, but they wanted to help her, not lock her up.

She slowly opened her eyes and stared listlessly at the graffiti scribbled on the wall in front of her.

“If God is with me, who can be against me?” it was said.

The officers gave her back her ID. She stared at it in confusion, then crouched back down in her plywood cave and fell back into a gloomy sleep.

David Bolanos contributed reporting.

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán.