The people have spoken. Laura Fernandez is our new president. The next four years in Costa Rica will be interesting. As the handpicked successor to Rodrigo Chaves, the thirty-nine-year-old Fernandez will lead the Partido Pueblo Soberano in its attempt to consolidate power and usher in a new Third Republic.
The international press has framed this as a shift to the right, or even a move toward authoritarianism. But Costa Rica has long been socially conservative, despite its mixed private sector and socialistic economy. And as for authoritarianism, it’s a big leap to imagine most Ticos choosing a dictatorship on the model of the Ortegas in Nicaragua, even if there’s already talk of amending the 1948 constitution.
While in power, Chaves adopted the jaguar as his party’s symbol. He urged Costa Ricans to be jaguars, meaning people not controlled by traditional politics or bureaucracy. His populism, marked by a pugnacious relationship with the established press and open disdain for the old order of the previously dominant Liberation Party, attracted tens of thousands of disaffected voters. As supporters celebrate, others wonder what the Third Republic idea really means in practice.
Security was central to the campaign, but the Chaves years saw a significant rise in the murder rate. In 2025, it hit 18 murders per 100,000 residents. Much of the blame lies with the expanding narco trade and the violence that comes with territorial battles. A new prison being built within the existing La Reforma complex is supposed to house the most violent inmates, including the cocaine cowboys running amok.
But what is the plan to hunt them down and arrest them? Will the Third Republic mean bringing back the military, or expanding the police force tenfold? And who pays salaries high enough to get people to risk their lives in these urban war zones?
And do we even need to follow the El Salvador model? Between 2015 and 2019, El Salvador’s murder rate was over 80 per 100,000, more than four times Costa Rica’s record high last year. El Salvador’s pre-Bukele lawlessness is well documented. Also, the coming mega-prison may not be only for narcos.
Last year, Chaves signed a safe third-country migrant agreement with the United States, allowing deportations of non-Costa Rican migrants to Costa Rica under certain conditions. Will the new jail primarily hold the criminals making life insecure here, or become a cash cow for taking in deportees from up north?
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