Kevin (his name was changed for safety reasons) was only 16 when a criminal gang recruited him.
He dropped out of school, left his home in Los Cuadros – the low-income community in northern San José where he lived with his mother and younger brother – and became a pawn to one of the leading drug dealers in the area.
For decades, Costa Rica, a country of just 5.2 million people, has been considered a paragon of social welfare and security in Central America: It abolished its armed forces after the 1948 civil war and became a model of environmental sustainability that now receives 2.2 million tourists a year.
In the past decade or so, however, homicides rates have risen by 81%: from 9.5 per 100.000 inhabitants in 2014 to 17.2 by 2023. The country now faces an unprecedented security crisis, with stories like Kevin’s becoming increasingly common.
Regressive tax systems, a poverty rate that reached 19.9% during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pressure to privatise public services have led to rising inequality and made poor communities an easy target for drug dealing groups looking for young recruits to feed into their business. Most homicides are attributed to rivalry among criminal groups and to hitmen from youth gangs such as Kevin’s.
Organised crime is not new in Costa Rica: The small nation has long been a transit point for drug trafficking. But the global rise of cocaine production and the country's strategically important location has made it an attractive platform to smuggle drugs into the United States and Europe through the recent boom years.
During the pandemic, tonnes of drugs remained stuck on Costa Rican soil, consolidating national consumption and leading to gang turf wars, even as the police and the legal system weren't prepared to fight the growing infiltration of Colombian and Mexican criminal groups and cartels.
This, compounded by the crisis of the public education system, has made teens especially vulnerable to gang recruitment, sparking fears they could become “a lost generation” condemned to live off low-skilled jobs or informal work in a country where 24.2% of people between 15 and 24 are unemployed – or to fall into criminality.
Last October, Mario Zamora, minister of public security, warned that children no older than 12 or 13 were being recruited. According to the education ministry, about 100 minors have been killed since the pandemic, almost 3% of the current homicides rate.
Costa Rica was not that long ago praised as having one of the best public education systems in Latin America. Not anymore.
According to researchers at the think tank Estado de la Nación (State of the Nation), the decaying quality of teaching, the erosion of the country's social fabric, the damaging effects of the pandemic, and the political decision to stop investing in education have led to what they call an “educational blackout” – with the 38% of minors who live in poverty being those most affected.
“The quality of the [education] system is related to the incursion of the youth into criminality,” Leonardo Sánchez, Costa Rica's deputy education minister, told The New Humanitarian. “[The education crisis] is the breeding ground for many to feel tempted to drop out of school because they feel it won’t give them the opportunities they want.”
According to deputy juvenile criminal prosecutor María Gabriela Alfaro, teenagers are in great danger because the gang leaders see them as expendable: “They pull them out of their environment and expose them to the highest risks within the criminal organisation.”
Schools are the gangs’ backyards
According to Isabel Román, coordinator of the Estado de la Nación report, public education in Costa Rica is experiencing its worst crisis in 40 years, largely due to the lack of economic support.
In 2024, the government invested 5.2% of the GDP in education, far less than the 8% established by the constitution. Investment per student is about $ 5,000 per year, less than half the average of the other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – the club of richer, more industrialised nations that Costa Rica belongs to.
And due to austerity measures taken since 2019, nearly 100,000 scholarships were cut in 2023 – about 25% of those granted the year before.
Pablo Sibaja, a union spokesperson for the Association of Orientation Professionals who works in a high school in Puntarenas – a city on the Pacific coast where homicides have risen dramatically – said a cascade of students dropped out of school after cuts in scholarships for transportation and food.
“As vulnerability rises, access to the illegal economy becomes more attractive for those who were already in precarious conditions,” Sibaja said.
The education ministry provided The New Humanitarian with data that shows that almost 5,000 teenagers dropped out of high school and technical education in 2022, and the same number in 2023. This represents about 2.5% of the students in that educational level annually. The figures are even worse for lagging students over the age of 18: half of those who enter the school system never graduate.
Teachers have also been arrested for selling drugs, and in some places, such as Los Cuadros, the police had to start patrolling schools after students said they were too scared to attend because of the violence in the area.
Dropouts are not the only problem. In the past few years, gangs have infiltrated schools. Some students receive financial support from gangs in exchange for recruiting schoolmates or running and overseeing the drug trade, Sibaja explained.
All across the country, violence has entered the classrooms. In mid-2023, a student was killed in her classroom while taking an exam in Tortuguero, a small town on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Teachers have also been arrested for selling drugs, and in some places, such as Los Cuadros, the police had to start patrolling schools after students said they were too scared to attend because of the violence in the area. Across the country, there have been several shootings outside of schools, including one in February that left three children injured.
To lower crime rates, the president has asked for hardline (so-called mano dura) legal reforms, such as lengthier prison sentences for teenagers in cases of murder, and longer pre-trial detentions, but this has faced strong opposition in Congress.
Schools have protocols to deal with violence or children at risk of being recruited, including instructions to liaise with the police, judicial authorities, or the state institution in charge of children and teens. But teachers and school directors say it requires cumbersome procedures that hinder immediate and adequate interventions. And some teachers fail to report students to avoid problems with local gangs.
‘They leave us alone’
As a “middle-income” country, Costa Rica receives little international help, according to Edder Araya, national coordinator of World Vision, an organisation working with vulnerable children. But “now there are needs that didn't exist before”, he added.
It largely falls upon humanitarian organisations to fill in the gaps.
“Gangs provide teens with a welcoming space and a protection they don’t have at home. They also inculcate the idea that they can quickly have a better life: the best cell phone, some money for their mother, the last sneakers on the market. Then they give them a gun and a sense of power.”
Antonio Gutiérrez, the pastor of a church in Chacarita, a low-income neighbourhood in Puntarenas, organises study sessions and activities for children. His church also provides psychosocial assistance to teens and their parents.
“We must be realistic: It is almost impossible for a 16-year-old boy who dropped out of school and got involved in criminal activities to ever return to the classroom”, he said. “So we need to fight hard to make sure that at least they don’t stop studying, and to reinforce the idea that schooling will allow them to have a better life.”
Gutiérrez works with local groups to provide people with emotional support, skills training, and community building. So does World Vision. They have both developed similar programmes in parts of the capital, San José, where needs are growing.
It is hard, however, to compete with the influence of narco culture, according to Sánchez. “Gangs provide [teens] with a welcoming space and a protection they don’t have at home,” said the deputy education minister. “They also inculcate the idea that they can quickly have a better life: the best cell phone, some money for their mother, the last sneakers on the market. Then they give them a gun and a sense of power.”
Humanitarians face an additional hurdle. The growing insecurity makes it harder to reach those in need.
Ernesto Bustos, the regional spokesperson for the Jehovah's Witnesses, described how they have been subjected to rising violence as they go about their work. To avoid incidents they now always enter dangerous neighbourhoods with local volunteers, and they don’t let women go to specific areas where they could be at higher risk.
“We only go during the day and at the safest hours,” he said. “If neighbours or authorities warn us of some possible danger, we pull out.”
Sometimes, World Vision groups go as far as entering risky areas with the police, but their main strategy consists of relying on community leaders as mediators to avoid conflict.
For Bustos, the security issue has many underlying factors that are often ignored, such as injustice, hopelessness, or resentment, which can all cause distrust in the government and in the justice system.
Kimberly (her name was changed for safety reasons), Kevin’s mother, feels the same way.
“I have been to so many places to ask for help, but the state, the government, they leave us alone,” she said. “They wait until you see your son in a coffin or a prison cell.”
Kimberly has tried to keep her 12-year old son Dany (his name was changed for safety reasons) from following in his brother's footsteps. She moved to another neighbourhood so he could attend a better school and takes him to soccer classes every Saturday so he doesn't mingle with gangs.
To reach his school, Dany must walk half an hour and then use public transportation, which takes a toll on Kimberly’s income as a maid. But that won’t stop her. “I don't want to lose my youngest son too,” she said.
Edited and translated by Daniela Mohor.
