Costa Rica Latest Stop For Mexican Drug
Gangs
By
Leslie Josephs
Mexican drug gangs are increasingly using
Costa Rica as a pick-up point for South
American cocaine headed north and the
problem is likely to get worse, President
Oscar Arias said.
Costa Rican police have seized close to 93
tonnes of cocaine between 2006 and 2009,
nearly twice the amount the Central American
country captured in the previous decade,
according to Interior Ministry data.
"We are punished by our geography," Arias
said, citing the growing trafficking
activity as a major public security issue.
"I believe the United States has to make a
much bigger effort to spend more in cutting
down on (cocaine) consumption," he told a
news conference.
Costa Rica sits halfway between the
cocaine-producing Andes and Mexico, whose
powerful cartels earn some $40 billion a
year smuggling the drug to the United States
and other developed countries.
Traffickers traditionally moved cocaine
through Central America by plane or boat.
They now are well implanted in Guatemala and
also are using storage bases in Costa Rica,
a nation long known as a haven of stability
in a region blighted by street gangs and
poverty.
"They're storing it here," said Public
Security Minister Janina del Vecchio. "Now,
they don't even have intermediaries but
instead have Colombians here who leave the
drug and the Mexican (cartels) pick it up."
Mexico is in the grip of a brutal escalation
in drug gang violence that has killed more
than 16,000 people since President Felipe
Calderon launched an army-led drug war at
the end of 2006.
The crackdown is one of the reasons driving
traffickers into Central America as they
haul in cocaine from Colombia and rival
producers such as Peru and Bolivia.
Costa Rica's economy depends heavily on
tourism dollars from visitors drawn to its
virgin forests and surfing beaches.
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