RICO’s Q —On Wednesday, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, joined by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and other officials, gathered to lay the first stone for a massive new prison inspired by El Salvador’s model.
The Centro de Alta Contención de la Criminalidad Organizada (Center for High Containment of Organized Crime)—known as CACCO—will be built inside the La Reforma prison complex.
Chaves and Bukele stood in front of a police unit equipped with specialized weapons and equipment not normally issued to regular police units. During this administration, this display has played out several times for the cameras.
This Costa Rica isn’t the one I fell in love with. It’s not the place I chose to make my home. And I bet a lot of foreigners who’ve been here a while feel that same way.
After nearly thirty years in Costa Rica, I’ve crossed paths with now former presidents like Luis Guillermo Solis (2014-2018) and Carlos Alvarado (2018-2022), but only in casual, non-political settings.
Solis was just another guy mingling at a paella event in Parque Viva. Alvarado? My wife and I bumped into him at Automercado. We talked for a few minutes, and of course, the internet had a field day making memes about me getting paid for that photo.
Years earlier, Abel Pacheco (2002-2006) would pass by my house in Rohrmoser on his way to and from work at Casa Presidencial. No bodyguards, just a low-key traffic police escort. Walking my dogs, I’d sometimes stroll past his home, a few blocks away, guarded by a single police officer.
Sometimes my walk extended to Oscar Arias’s house (2006-2010 second term), where again, just a lone police officer kept watch. I attended official events like the Ruta 27 inauguration and even the tense 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, where the military ousted President Zelaya. Not once did I see heavily armed agents lurking anywhere—not even hidden in the bushes.
I remember walking with a group around Oscar as he headed to the National Stadium for Laura Chinchilla’s inauguration (2010-2014). La Sabana was packed with VIPs from across Central America and beyond. No police decked out in military gear, just the usual traffic officers handling traffic and escorting some of the dignitaries.
When President Obama came to Costa Rica, President Laura Chinchilla stopped her car just ahead of his motorcade and stepped out to shake hands with the crowd gathered along Paseo Colon — including mine.
I could go on, but this brings me to today.
I’ve never met Chaves, and honestly, I don’t want to be around when he stages these kinds of shows, which aren’t new for his administration.
Sure, there were reports on Tuesday about an alleged assassination plot against him and the Salvadoran president. But as Claudia Dobles, former first lady and now a presidential candidate, put it in perspective: “Any threat against a president demands serious attention. Yet, with Chaves, it’s strange how the mediático (media spectacle) takes priority, and only afterward do formal complaints come into play.”
Just so you know, I’m not a fan of Chaves, not for his politics, but mostly because he tends to create more division than unity with things like this.
On February 1, we Costa Ricans will face a decision. To me, it’s obvious that another four years of the same, continuing with Laura Fernandez, as she’s Chaves’s handpicked successor for his policies, appealing to his supporters despite his controversies, isn’t what we need.
PS: The first stone of the new prison, the reason for Bukele’s visit, was not laid, and the deadline for construction has not yet begun. The Salvadoran president simply arrived, gave a speech, stayed for the remainder of the event, and left. He did not inspect the construction work or tour the site, as had been previously announced.
Nils Ching, Deputy Minister of Justice, acknowledged that the event did not yet mark the start of construction and that it was merely a symbolic activity, with no noticeable progress on the project at this time.