Q COSTARICA — Claudia Dobles, former First Lady and legislator from the Agenda Ciudadana (Citizen Agenda) party, called for the dismissal of Rodrigo Chaves as head of the Ministry of the Presidency due to the insecurity plaguing Crucitas.
In controversial statements, Dobles referred to President Laura Fernández’s visit to Crucitas — the open-pit gold mining area—last Friday, where she was evacuated after an explosion, asserting that if it wasn’t a security failure warranting dismissals, “it could have been a staged scene.”
According to Dobles, then-President Rodrigo Chaves had already visited the area four years ago and promised improvements, “and what we’ve seen since then is a series of bad decisions.”
“What happened during the president’s (Fernández) visit to the site is truly worrying, a visit that was, in principle, planned well in advance and for which there was an advance security detail to guarantee the safety of both the president and her entourage.
“What happened in Crucitas leaves only two possibilities: either a terrible mismanagement of risk, which would mean demanding the dismissal of the Minister of Security (Gerald Campos) and the Minister of the Presidency (Rodrigo Chaves), because the latter is in charge of the DIS (Intelligence and Security Directorate) and the president’s security; or, unfortunately, this raises doubts as to whether it was all staged,” Dobles said.
The purpose of the tour was for the President to personally get a first-hand view of the current conditions of illegal mining and convince the members of the Legislature to allow gold mining through an auction.
Dobles did not go on the tour, but legislators of the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) and Frente Amplio (FA) did.
For months, after being elected, Fernández has pointed out that the Crucitas area is dangerous, and last Friday, during a tour with government officials and legislators, an explosion proved her right.
Following the incident, the President and others were evacuated from the area.
The tour is currently suspended, but the President did hold a press conference.
The Ministerio de Seguridad (Ministry of Security) reported that all protocols were activated and no one was injured. Meanwhile, officers at the scene are trying to locate people who were seen 200 meters (two blocks) from where the official group was located.
“If they dared to set off a detonation in the mountains, which is what it sounded like, frankly I thought it was like one of those firecrackers that explode during shifts, it sounded like boom, like an echo, which was surely carried by the forest, and I felt like what you see in the movies, thank you very much, where they grab you by the hair and throw you to the ground and pull you up, you can’t see how I ended up, but I thank them for watching over my safety and that of the deputies,” said Fernández.
The tour, which had begun very early this Friday due to the harsh conditions, was called off, and four people, including legislators and a member of the media, had to be treated for drops in blood pressure, sugar levels, and heat stroke.
Claudia Dobles, Fernández’s opponent in the 2026 presidential race, publicly confirmed she wouldn’t join the trip to Crucitas, saying she was refused permission to bring along two advisors.
“We made an express request to the Presidency that, given that we are a one-person faction (she is the only legislative member of the CAC) it was important that I be accompanied by a technical advisor and a communications advisor,” Dobles said, questioning why the same measure should be applied to single-member factions as to blocs with a larger number of legislators.
Dobles mentioned we could bring two advisors since many legislators, even from the ruling party, weren’t joining the tour.
Real or staged?
On social networks, the opinions are divided regarding Friday’s explosion in Crucitas.
Some believe it was real, others that it was staged.
The lack of follow-up news, such as the search for the site of the detonation, the type of explosive identified, a search operation carried out for the person who detonated the explosive, or whether the press conference was more important, leads many to believe that it was a staged incident.
Others, with supposed knowledge of the area, claim that explosions are a regular occurrence there, part of the work of the “coligalleros”, a term primarily used in Costa Rica and famously linked to illegal mining operations.
The article “Sospechan de montaje en incidente de Crucitas” (Crucitas incident suspected to be staged) from La Nacion (nacion.com) reports that several individuals involved have, for the first time, claimed they were victims of an alleged setup.
“This supposed staging aimed to exacerbate already tense situations surrounding the Crucitas incident,” writes Costa Rica’s leading newspaper.
The accusations suggest that the event might have been manipulated to worsen conflicts or tensions related to the case. However, the article does not detail who might be responsible or the broader implications of these claims.