Mauren Jiménez cleans houses and cares for sick patients to make ends meet. In her spare time, the 54-year-old community leader does work most people avoid: helping families in Alajuelita bury young men killed in Costa Rica’s drug-linked violence. In the steep streets of her hillside precario in the San José district of Alajuelita, Jiménez says shootings between rival dealers are part of daily life.
When a teenager or young man is killed, she steps in to help relatives navigate the morgue, the paperwork, and the costs of a funeral. Last year alone, she assisted the families of about 20 young men, she said, including some who were 14 or 15 years old. Some were gang members; others were bystanders caught in the crossfire. Her goal, she said, is the same in each case: a dignified burial.
Costa Rica, long viewed as one of the safer countries in Latin America, has seen a sharp rise in killings linked to drug trafficking. Seven out of ten murders are connected to the drug trade, according to figures cited in the campaign ahead of Sunday’s general elections. The homicide rate reached 17 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, up from 11.2 in 2019.
Authorities say part of the shift is geographic and economic. With coastlines on both the Pacific and Caribbean, Costa Rica has moved from being mainly a transit corridor to a logistics hub for Colombian and Mexican cartels, according to Michael Soto, director of the Judicial Investigation Agency. Local groups store cocaine and move it out of the country, Soto said, pointing to “rings of poverty” in urban areas as places where organized crime can take root.
He recalled meeting a 13-year-old during an operation in Limón who said he wanted to be a drug trafficker because people in his neighborhood involved in the trade appeared to be “doing very well.” The violence has become a central election issue. Front-runner Laura Fernández, 39, is campaigning on a hardline security platform inspired by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele.
She has accused Costa Rica’s courts of letting gang members walk free and says she wants a large enough congressional bloc to remake the judiciary. Rights groups have warned that her proposals could push one of the region’s more stable democracies toward authoritarian-style policing.
Fernández has pledged to finish a new mega-prison modeled on Bukele’s high-security facility and to declare a state of emergency in areas hit by violence. Her opponents have focused more on expanding police capacity and strengthening naval surveillance. In Alajuelita, residents worry less about ideology and more about stray bullets. In 2024, a young boy was killed inside his home by a bullet fired outside, a case that deepened local fears about children getting caught between armed groups.
Father Gabriel Corrales, a 59-year-old priest in Alajuelita, said even funerals can feel dangerous when the victim is believed to have ties to gangs, because violence can follow mourners. Jiménez says the work has taken a toll. After a wave of killings, including the death of a young man shot dozens of times, she sought counseling. Still, she says she will not stop.
“I can’t wrap my head around a president saying they should be left to kill each other,” she said, referring to comments by outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves that downplayed the rising murder rate as tit-for-tat gang killings. For Jiménez, the politics are secondary to the human cost. “Everyone in life deserves a second chance,” she said.
