Just days before Costa Rica inaugurates its new president, a deeply troubling development has cast a shadow over the country’s long-standing reputation as a beacon of democracy and free expression in Latin America. The United States has revoked the tourist visas of five of the seven board members of La Nación, one of Costa Rica’s most prominent and influential newspapers. The timing could hardly be more politically loaded.
The affected executives include board chairman Pedro Abreu Jiménez, Vice Chairman Luis Javier Castro Lachner, and directors Carmen Montero Luthmer, Luis Carlos Chaves Fonseca, and Daniel Lacayo Abreu. Strikingly, the board members did not receive any formal notification from the U.S. State Department. Instead, they reportedly first learned their visas had been canceled through coverage in pro-government media outlets, a detail that many observers found deeply unsettling.
The State Department offered no detailed public explanation, citing confidentiality rules. That silence has only amplified suspicion about what lies behind the decision. La Nación has spent years serving as one of the most aggressive watchdogs of outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves, whose governing style has drawn widespread criticism for its hostility toward independent journalism. The paper has published investigations touching on sensitive subjects, including sexual harassment allegations and campaign financing irregularities.
Chaves, who came to power in 2022 vowing to act as a political “tsunami” against independent media, has made clashing with the press a signature element of his brand. His alliance with the Trump administration has been unusually close; Costa Rica has even agreed to accept third-country deportees as part of Washington’s regional migration enforcement efforts.
Former Costa Rican communications minister Mauricio Herrera stated bluntly that the visa cancellations were almost certainly made at the request of the Costa Rican government, describing the move as an effort to intimidate those who dare to exercise independent journalism and free expression.
The visa revocations do not exist in isolation. They are part of a broader and escalating pattern. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former President Óscar Arias had his U.S. visa revoked last year, as did his brother Rodrigo Arias, then president of the Legislative Assembly. Supreme Court justices and opposition lawmakers have also lost travel privileges to the United States.
Critics argue these actions collectively amount to a coordinated effort to neutralize political and institutional opposition to the Chaves government. The context makes the timing of the La Nación revocations especially striking. On May 8, just two days after this story broke, Laura Fernández, Chaves’ handpicked successor and former chief of staff, will be inaugurated as Costa Rica’s 49th president at the National Stadium in San José.
Fernández, who won February’s election with 48.3% of the vote while running explicitly on a platform of continuity with Chaves, has already signaled that she will maintain the deportation agreement with Washington and carry forward her predecessor’s confrontational approach toward traditional institutions and media.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the visa revocations swiftly, warning that the Trump administration is using immigration tools to punish critical voices and suppress disfavored viewpoints. The Inter-American Press Association echoed those concerns, cautioning that Costa Rica faces a structural erosion of freedom of expression driven from within the executive branch.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders recorded a historic drop for Costa Rica in its 2026 press freedom index, ranking the country 38th, a stunning fall for a nation once considered a regional model. For a country preparing to celebrate a democratic transfer of power before an audience of delegations from 71 nations, the message sent by these visa revocations is impossible to ignore: in the new Costa Rica taking shape, independent journalism may come at a price.
