On February 15, 2020, Costa Rica stopped a shipment of over five tons of cocaine – the biggest drug bust in Costa Rican history – headed for the Netherlands. This drug interdiction was a triumph, but shined a bright light on the Costa Rican cocaine trafficking problem. “In Costa Rica, we are facing a tsunami of cocaine, and it’s drowning us”, stated former chief of Costa Rica’s national anti-drug commission, Mauricio Boraschi.

On September 21 of this year, President Carlos Alvarado signed a new law (Law Number 9902) aimed at eliminating all illegal airport runways in Costa Rica, and giving authorities the power to find and destroy all illegal airplane runways situated on private property. This crackdown on constant small drug flights should help reduce the endless flow of drugs in and out of the country, a situation that has grown more pervasive now that Costa Rica is focused mainly on fighting COVID-19, allowing criminals to find new workarounds for moving their product. This new law allows drug enforcement agents to conduct searches for these illicit landing strips, and destroy them if the property owner cannot provide documents indicating legal permission to have a landing strip on their land.

The new law was proposed by Congresswoman Zoila Volio Pacheco. She described the law as “a step forward against organized crime, and an operative instrument to prevent the flow of drugs into our country.”
Last year, Security Minister Michael Soto said that the government knew of 105 illegal runways on private property, and by 2020 that number had grown to at least 141.

Part of the challenge for Costa Rica was the lack of radar equipment that could trace small planes. In 2016, Costa Rica had only one radar, the one at the international airport Juan Santamaria in Alajuela. That radar was used to track commercial flights, not small private airplanes. The radar situation is more sophisticated now, making it easier to track the flight paths of the smaller airplanes usually used by drug smugglers.

Of the three biggest drug busts in Costa Rica, none involved drugs being smuggled by air. The drugs were intercepted as they passed through Costa Rica by boat or on land. The Star has covered the increase in “drug subs”, homemade submersibles used to bring drugs up from Colombia, en route to USA. The illegal landing strips are used mainly by smaller, feeder drug traffickers, who move their drugs in and out of Costa Rica, almost without detection.

Costa Rica has had a history of drug trafficking and money laundering since the mid 1980s. The country is perfectly situated as a pit stop for drug traffickers moving drugs from South America up to the USA. The narco-traffickers were originally Colombians or Mexicans, but Costa Ricans have been moving in on those gangs and forming gangs of their own. These gangs make use of small planes and private landing strips.

They will have a harder time moving their drugs now that Law 9902 will make their trafficking routes more challenging

About the Author :