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Interesting Take on Trends in Costa Rica

The following is reprinted with permission from Costa Rica Krav Maga:

Several announcements have been made by the U.S. government in the past few months stating Mexican cartels are moving into Costa Rica. Why? Maybe as a result of stepped up policing in other countries. This includes crackdowns on known air trafficking routes and a much more aggressive Cost Guard. This has resulted in increased overland trafficing where roads and border crossings are used. Several large - scale investigations have pieced together emerging land based routes or a combination of land based routes with sea routes.


In one case, authorities pieced together a portion of a route being used by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel in which small quantities of drugs entered Costa Rica from Panama via the international point of entry on the Pan-American Highway. The cocaine was often held for several days in a storage facility before being loaded onto another vehicle to be driven across the country on major highways. Upon approaching the Nicaraguan border, however, the traffickers opted to avoid the official port of entry and instead transferred the shipments into Nicaragua on foot or on horseback along a remote part of the border. Once across, the shipments were taken to the shores of the large inland Lake Nicaragua, where they were transferred onto boats to be taken north, at which point they would be loaded onto vehicles to be driven toward the Honduran border. In one case in Nicaragua, authorities uncovered another Sinaloa-linked route that passed through Managua and is believed to have followed the Pan-American Highway through Honduras and into El Salvador.


Now take a country like Costa Rica.....what could they do with cash flow like that? Or better yet, who could you bribe?


Right now the cartels have their hands full at home...fighting two wars, one against eachother and another against the government, so chances are they will not move much resources to Costa Rica when they are needed at home. It's unrealistic to say they would close shop there and move here when it's so far away from the delivery area - the US.
Another point, the amount of drugs that are stopped in Costa Rica are a drop in the bucket compared to what gets through. Poor police work here may actually help keep the peace. If the Costa Rica government declared a "war" against cartels....then there might be a response, similar to what is taking place in Guatemala now.


The future of Costa Rica will involve a higher crime rate but maybe not as a result from cartels themselves. It will come more from the cluster of criminals that surround the drug trade. The street level dealers, the punks relocating to Costa Rica who are members of violent gangs from El Salvador, Mexico, or even South America. The invasion of drugs themselves could be the biggest danger, once just a transit point, now more product hits the streets right here in Costa Rica instead of passing through. More criminals influenced by drugs will create more violence and more desperation. Maybe the president should send a message to the cartels -    " Let sleeping dogs lie....just keep pushing that crap North". 


People should not overreact to anything the U.S .government says....soon there will be other issues coming into play - political- where the "drug war" will become a way to balance power in Central America. Costa Rica needs to decide it's own reasons for action and it's own risks moving forward. There is a big difference from cartels setting up a few warehouses vs setting up a headquarters for operations..... as stated before, Costa Rica is to far from the US border to worry about that.

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