By the end of Wednesday, October 30, two stories topped the list of Costa Rica’s most-read news: a ten-month-old baby had been killed by a hitman, and President Rodrigo Chaves was planning to welcome his neighbor from El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, “with full honors,” despite objections from other branches of the government.
At first glance these two stories would appear unrelated, but current conditions in Costa Rica mean that events like the death of a baby in an armed attack in a rural municipality south of San José have increased the eagerness with which certain sectors of the population have come to support the “iron fist” agenda implemented by Bukele in El Salvador to combat gang violence. The ten-month-old baby died in the hospital: a collateral victim killed in a hail of bullets fired by alleged gunmen at a car driven by a woman with a record for dealing drugs, who died at the scene. Five days later, the perpetrators had not been arrested or identified. The crime again highlighted Chaves’ dismissive attitude toward the wave of homicides sweeping the country —an attitude expressed in 2023 when the president claimed that criminals simply “kill each other”— while blaming Costa Rica’s laws and lamenting the limitations to the central government’s power to take more effective action.
Public discussions around steps the Costa Rican state should take to stop the escalation of violence have gone on for years. The country once boasted of being the safest in Central America, but in 2023, it broke an all-time record for homicides: 907 deaths, a rate of 17.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, or double that of ten years ago. This debate is now gaining intensity given the almost daily news stories of young men on motorcycles shooting suspected rivals in the drug trade. So far in 2024, the homicide rate is only 4 percent less than it was during the first ten months of the record year. With insecurity identified as the population’s top concern and news of El Salvador’s plummeting murder rate circulating widely, many are eagerly anticipating the visit from Bukele, who enjoys both the admiration of President Chaves as well as a significant sector of the Costa Rican population, while others level criticism against the Salvadoran leader for his authoritarian behaviors and the concentration of power he has overseen, under the justification of neutralizing gang violence.
Costa Rica has been talking about Bukele for years without even knowing it, since before he came to power. At least two polls conducted this year show that a majority of the Costa Rican population is sympathetic to Bukele, while a recent study by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and Santiago de Chile University points to Costa Rica as one of the countries where “iron fist” policies, as exemplified by Bukele’s state of exception in El Salvador, are now considered desirable.
But now the debate has surged to the surface: on the one hand, the traditional Costa Rican recipe of judicial policies ensuring civil rights, coupled with social investment within the bounds of democratic rule; on the other, the “Bukele model,” characterized by a hardening of police repression under a government unrestrained by checks and balances and focused on responding to popular demands at any cost. “It might seem contradictory to want to act like other countries to defend what we’ve always been, but reality has forced us to,” explained Francisco, a 52-year-old Costa Rican taxi driver, while drinking coffee in a fast food restaurant in the capital.
This is the tension triggered by the announcement of Bukele’s visit. And on this occasion, the Salvadoran leader will not be coming to take strolls in the park or to party with his relatives who live here. Neither the dates nor the details of the visit have been confirmed, but local media report that he will arrive before the weekend and that Monday, November 11, will be the main day of formal activities. “I invited President Bukele to dinner, to a state dinner. We are going to give him all the attention such an affair entails,” the Costa Rican president said, speaking about a reception that, in principle, would include an event hosted in the judicial and legislative chambers.
What was initially planned as a “state visit” (the first in at least ten years) is now merely an “official visit,” a designation requiring less elaborate protocols, after deputies and magistrates refused to receive the Salvadoran president in an official session given that he embodies much of the authoritarianism that they also see and criticize in President Chaves, who for his part exonerates Bukele for sins against democracy while admiring his exceptional power, granted by the supermajority he enjoys in the legislature and a judicial system under his control. In Costa Rica, the ruling party occupies less than 15 percent of the parliamentary seats, and the judiciary, especially the Constitutional Court, is viewed as an obstacle by the executive. It is clear that Chaves envies the conditions under which Bukele rules.
“A president who was democratically elected twice is coming to visit a neighboring country and we, in the executive branch, will receive him with the honors he deserves,” Chaves said Wednesday during his weekly televised address, though he did acknowledge that the “Bukele model” is controversial. “There is a debate, and it’s not a minor one, about whether the ends justify the means. The reality is that El Salvador went from being a place of violence, with a tremendous murder rate, [...] to being one of the safest societies in the world. That is a fact,” the Costa Rican president said, in what was the latest of his many admiring references to the Salvadoran leader.
This is why Chaves, who came to power in 2022 as a threat to the traditional system and claims to be leading a revolution against economic and political elites, has announced that he will give Bukele a welcome he has yet to grant any of his counterparts. Criticism from judges and opposition congressional representatives do not appear to bother Chaves, but rather to inspire him to double down on diatribes against powers of state outside his control, which he accuses of rewarding criminal groups with soft or complicit policies. He regularly blames these powers for “giving hugs to those who give bullets,” a play on the iconic phrase “hugs not bullets,” used by Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to describe his government’s approach to security policy with respect to organized crime. These powers defend leftist ideological positions that run counter to the will of the people, insists Chaves, who enjoys the popular support of more than 50 percent of the Costa Rican population — an impressive standing for a president more than halfway through his four-year term. The Costa Rican constitution prohibits Chaves from running for consecutive reelection in 2026, however, and it is unlikely that current magistrates will reinterpret this foundational law.
Chaves, thus far unable to show any results in the reduction of organized crime, has insisted on blaming the judicial branch and the Legislative Assembly, where opposition parties continue to criticize his decisions on security strategy, attributing them to the president’s willingness to facilitate criminal activities. The hostility between powers has reached levels never before seen by the current population.
It is odd, then, that Bukele’s visit would be planned as a coordinated activity, but commitment to convention appears to have won out over the discord. This is why the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arnoldo André, proposed to the Supreme Court of Justice that the institution hold a special session to welcome Bukele, and why Congress discussed the possibility of conferring him with honors as well. But objections arose immediately. It would be hypocritical to pay tribute to Bukele while fighting with Chaves. “A power that represents the pillar of democracy in our country receiving a man whose authoritarianism has destroyed democracy in his country,” as Ariel Robles, of the leftist Frente Amplio party, described it. Legislative deputy Óscar Izquierdo, head of the National Liberation Party (PLN, the largest faction in the legislature), was also against honoring Bukele, whom he had previously criticized as the antithesis of Costa Rican political culture. Ultimately, the presidents of both parties agreed to receive Bukele in a bilateral event, but without special sessions or red carpets, just the basic courtesies of protocol. It was a “Tico-style” solution, but Chaves was not fully satisfied.
This is why last Monday’s news announcing Bukele’s arrival was not entirely surprising. A press statement issued by the Office of the President communicated a decision made after the two leaders discussed the details over the phone: “The presidents agreed on an itinerary for President Bukele that does not involve the Legislative Assembly or the Supreme Court of Justice, nor any meetings with any representative of those powers,” the bulletin read. The guest of state will not go anywhere where he is not entirely welcome, nor will he have to listen to the president of Congress, Rodrigo Arias, or the president of the Court, Judge Orlando Aguirre, talk to him about democratic rules or division of powers.
*Translated by Max Granger
