Costa Rica Has Fallen: The Silent Invasion of Colombian Cocaine
Jesus Romero, Co-Founder and Senior Fellow, MSI²
I. The Illusion of Peace Is Over
For decades, Costa Rica stood apart in a region too often consumed by instability. It was a nation without a military, a democracy that defied the odds, and a peaceful enclave that attracted not only tourists but thousands of American retirees and expats seeking safety and serenity. That image is now in ruins.
Today, Costa Rica faces a dark new reality. Homicides have reached historic levels. Heavily armed cartels move freely along its ports and highways. Law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed. The institutions that once made Costa Rica exceptional are now under siege.
But this is not just Costa Rica’s problem. What is happening there is the result of a much deeper and more dangerous export. The country has been caught in the silent invasion of Colombian cocaine.
II. The Colombian Origin of the Crisis
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, global cocaine production hit an all-time high in 2023, exceeding 3,700 metric tons (UNODC, 2025). Colombia remains the heart of that explosion. Coca cultivation has expanded under the protection of criminal organizations that now operate with increasing impunity.
Rather than dismantling these networks, recent Colombian governments have negotiated with them, tolerated them, or simply lost ground. With enforcement weakening and international demand growing, the traffickers have pushed outward, flooding neighboring countries with product, people, and violence.
Costa Rica, with its ideal geography, its established shipping lanes, and its relative defenselessness, was next in line.
III. Costa Rica’s Strategic Collapse
The transformation has been rapid and severe.
Port cities like Limón and Moín, once known for tourism and trade, have become primary exit points for cocaine shipments. Local police report being persistently outgunned, and judges and prosecutors have received credible death threats, leading some to abandon cases (El País, 2024). Contract killings have surged. In 2024, Costa Rica registered approximately 880 homicides—only slightly down from 907 in 2023—reflecting a rate of nearly 16.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, with about 70 percent of homicides linked to cartel-related violence (The Tico Times, 2025).
New criminal alliances involving Colombian, Mexican, Balkan, and Costa Rican actors have taken shape. Territory is now controlled by whoever holds the drug corridors rather than by state institutions (Insight Crime, 2024).
Even elite sectors of Costa Rican society have become entangled in drug trafficking. In Final Flight: Queen of Air, Jesús Romero and Steve Tochterman recount how Captain Rodrigo Chaves Montenegro, a former Servicio Aéreo de Costa Rica pilot, allegedly used his aviation access to facilitate cocaine shipments to the United States. His wife, María Fernanda Corrales Jiménez, then a consular official in Houston, reportedly assisted with laundering and logistics (Romero & Tochterman, 2024).
The couple’s dual access enabled them to transport narcotics, cash, and personnel undetected. U.S. law enforcement eventually disrupted the operation, but institutional damage was already done. It exposed how deeply criminal networks had infiltrated state structures and exploited diplomatic and aviation channels.
U.S. government sources underscore how narco-trafficking has debilitated Costa Rica’s institutional security. A November 2023 statement from the U.S. Department of the Treasury identified Gilbert Hernán de los Ángeles Bell Fernández, known as “Macho Coca,” as a key Costa Rican cocaine trafficker linked to a 66 percent increase in homicides in Limón over the past decade. Bell operated as a regional cocaine facilitator, using maritime assets and front companies sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in coordination with DEA operations in Costa Rica (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2023). This case highlights how narco-trafficking has become not only a transnational security issue but also a local driver of corruption and lethal violence.
IV. Why the United States Should Care
This is not a distant crisis. The United States has a direct stake in what is happening.
There are an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Americans living in Costa Rica, either as permanent residents or seasonal migrants. Many are retirees who have invested in property, rely on the local healthcare system, and live in regions now experiencing sharp increases in violence.
Costa Rica has also been one of the United States’ most consistent partners in the region. It has worked closely with U.S. authorities on drug interdiction, environmental conservation, and migration control.
The cocaine flowing through Costa Rica is not destined for local consumption. It is primarily bound for the United States. The countries in its path, including Costa Rica and Ecuador, are victims of criminal interests that see them only as transshipment points. The violence, corruption, and institutional decay occurring in these states are collateral damage from a market that begins and ends with U.S. demand.
In formal testimony before the U.S. Congress, both the U.S. Coast Guard and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) identified Costa Rica as a critical waypoint in the Eastern Pacific cocaine corridor. Rear Admiral Adam A. Chamie, during a 2024 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, noted that maritime routes transiting Costa Rica are among the most heavily used by traffickers moving cocaine toward the U.S. coastline. Similarly, Admiral Craig Faller, then-Commander of SOUTHCOM, testified that up to 65 percent of U.S.-bound cocaine passes through this zone, where Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) operates with limited assets to interdict only a fraction of known shipments (Chamie, 2024; Faller, 2019; U.S. Southern Command, 2024).
V. A Hemispheric Warning
Costa Rica’s collapse mirrors what we saw in Ecuador just two years ago. A peaceful nation, infiltrated, corrupted, and militarized almost overnight. In both cases, the driver was the same: cocaine from Colombia and the networks that traffic it.
Costa Rica, like Ecuador, is learning the hard way. No democracy in the region is immune to Colombia’s cocaine-fueled chaos.
Costa Rica is not the epicenter. It is only a barometer of a deeper crisis sweeping the region, a criminal and violence explosion driven by record levels of cocaine production (UNODC, 2025).
VI. Maritime and Air Threats
Costa Rica’s location on the Pacific trafficking corridor has made it an increasingly frequent destination for advanced smuggling vessels, particularly semi-submersible and low-profile boats.
In August 2024, Costa Rican authorities intercepted a semi-submersible off the southern Pacific coast carrying two metric tons of cocaine (The Tico Times, 2024a). That single seizure accounted for nearly a third of the country’s total confiscations for the year.
The air domain also presents rising challenges. Intelligence reports suggest small aircraft originating in Mexico are landing on remote strips in Costa Rica to pick up pre-positioned cocaine. These flights often operate under radar and return north undetected.
VII. Collapse at the Top
Just as Mexico had García Luna, Costa Rica now faces its own elite scandal. Celso Gamboa, once a powerful magistrate and former Attorney General, has been implicated in international drug trafficking. The United States formally requested his extradition in 2024 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2024).
According to the Instituto Costarricense sobre Drogas, cocaine seizures dropped from 47,127 kilograms in 2020 to just 6,149 kilograms in mid-2024—a sign of declining state interdiction capacity (ICD, 2024; La República, 2024).
VIII. What Must Be Done
Costa Rica cannot fight this alone. The magnitude of the threat demands an urgent and coordinated international response. The United States should dramatically expand intelligence-sharing, maritime surveillance, and interagency cooperation with Costa Rica. Washington must also invest in anti-corruption capacity, support judicial protection programs, and target narco-assets via OFAC and the DEA. Joint operations with JIATF-South should increase in both frequency and scope, with Costa Rican agencies embedded as trusted counterparts.
At the regional level, multilateral bodies like the OAS and SICA must place Costa Rica’s crisis on the agenda, not only as a security issue but as a test of democratic resilience. If Costa Rica collapses, the precedent will be devastating.
IX. The Democratic Firewall
Costa Rica has long served as a moral anchor and democratic firewall in Central America. It stood firm when others faltered—during the civil wars of the 1980s, through regional coups, and amid the erosion of the rule of law in neighboring states. Losing Costa Rica now would be more than symbolic. It would represent the triumph of a cocaine-fueled criminal insurgency over the last fully functioning democracy in the region.
Strengthening Costa Rica is not about charity—it is a strategic imperative for those who still believe in the promise of democratic order in the Western Hemisphere.
X. Conclusion
Costa Rica’s descent into narco-chaos is not an isolated tragedy. It is a hemispheric alarm bell. A warning that the cocaine flowing out of Colombia is no longer just a criminal enterprise—it is a geopolitical force with the power to dismantle democracies from within.
The illusion that Costa Rica is immune has now been shattered. The question is whether the United States and its allies will act before the rest of the region follows.
References
Chamie, A. A. (2024, February 15). Testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation – Hearing on the Coast Guard’s Role in Maritime Drug Interdiction. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/80927E2C-F2C0-4256-A357-04B804003600
DEA, Office of North and Central America Division. (n.d.). Central America used as mid-point storage and transit region for cocaine to U.S. https://www.dea.gov/foreign-offices/north-and-central-america
El País. (2024, October 23). Death threats and drug trafficking suspicions: Political tension rises in Costa Rica. https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-10-23/death-threats-and-drug-trafficking-suspicions-political-tension-rises-in-costa-rica.html
Faller, C. S. (2019, June 4). Statement before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation. https://www.congress.gov/event/116th-congress/house-event/LC64707/text
Insight Crime. (2024). Cocaine and marijuana fuel ever higher homicides in Costa Rica. https://insightcrime.org/news/cocaine-and-marijuana-fuel-ever-higher-homicides-in-costa-rica/
Instituto Costarricense sobre Drogas. (2024). Estadísticas de decomisos de cocaína 2014–2024. https://www.icd.go.cr/portalicd/index.php/publicaciones/main-boletines-estadisticos
La República. (2024, June 17). ¿Es Costa Rica un paraíso narco? https://www.larepublica.net/noticia/es-costa-rica-un-paraiso-narco
The Tico Times. (2024, August 13). Costa Rica intercepts semi-submersible vessel carrying cocaine. https://ticotimes.net/2024/08/13/costa-rica-intercepts-semi-submersible-vessel-carrying-cocaine
The Tico Times. (2025, May 29). Costa Rica approves extradition of nationals for drug trafficking and terrorism. https://ticotimes.net/2025/05/29/costa-rica-approves-extradition-of-nationals-for-drug-trafficking-and-terrorism
U.S. Department of State. (2025). International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2025, Vol. 1. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-International-Narcotics-Control-Strategy-Volume-1-Accessible.pdf
U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2023, November 15). Treasury and Costa Rican Government Cooperate on Sanction Against Notorious Narcotics Trafficker. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1911
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2025). World Drug Report 2025. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2025/June/unodc-world-drug-report-2025_-global-instability-compounding-social--economic-and-security-costs-of-the-world-drug-problem.html
U.S. Southern Command. (2024). 2024 SOUTHCOM Posture Statement. https://www.southcom.mil/Portals/7/Documents/Posture%20Statements/2024%20SOUTHCOM%20Posture%20Statement%20FINAL.pdf
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).
From Senior Fellow Jesus Romero: "... Port cities like Limón and Moín, once known for tourism and trade, have become primary exit points for cocaine shipments. Local police report being persistently outgunned, and judges and prosecutors have received credible death threats, leading some to abandon cases (El País, 2024). Contract killings have surged..."