Locals strive to get home by dark in this vibrant Caribbean port, where cruise ship guests are whisked away to jungle excursions in Costa Rica’s interior, while police patrol with high-caliber firearms in the face of escalating drug violence.
With a homicide rate five times the national average, Limon was the epicenter of Costa Rica’s record 657 killings last year.
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Public anger has been sparked by the violence in a nation better renowned for its carefree, “it’s all good” mindset and absence of a standing army, and President Rodrigo Chaves’ administration is scrambling to find solutions.
Where Costa Rica had previously been just a pass-through for northbound cocaine from Colombian and Mexican cartels, authorities say it is now a warehousing and transshipment point for drugs sent to Europe by homegrown Costa Rican gangs.
In Limon, that shifting criminal dynamic has mixed with swelling ranks of young unemployed men who make up the majority of the casualties in fierce territorial battles.
Martín Arias, the deputy security minister and head of Costa Rica’s Coast Guard, said Limon’s violence stems from disputes over both the control of cocaine shipped to Europe and the marijuana sold locally.
Authorities busted a gang attempting to transport narcotics via the cargo port in January. Cocaine has been concealed in steel container walls and even packaged with pineapple and yucca that is being sent to Spain and Holland.
Drug traffickers from other countries used to pay Costa Rican fishermen to deliver fuel to their smuggling vessels.
The fisherman and their accomplices first marketed their cocaine locally as crack since they lacked the connections to sell it internationally. He claimed that they started smuggling cocaine out of the port after they saw how much more it was worth in Europe.
Meanwhile, gang wars sprang out over control of the local market as marijuana arrived from Jamaica and Colombia. According to Arias, those that are killed there are mostly from disadvantaged neighborhoods.
421 of the 657 killings in Costa Rica last year were labeled as “score-settling” by the authorities.
Gustavo Mata, a former minister of security, calculated that the rise in drug trafficking was responsible for 80% of murders in Costa Rica.
