Costa Rica’s gold leaves the country through the airport in gold bars. In the last seven years, $152 million left without leaving a single cent of taxes here. And in the last six months of 2024, the rate at which smuggled cyanide has been seized increased by 600%. Where and how is all of that gold processed? Why did respiratory illnesses in Abangares increase by 250% between 2019 and 2023 and why do five out of 10 people suffer from hypertension there? Who contaminates the land with cyanide and mercury in Guanacaste?
“Almost all [of the material that they extract in Crucitas] has to be brought here,” Samuel told us from inside one of the caves they have excavated on the back side of a ravine on Calle La Mina (The Mine Street), in Las Juntas de Abangares. This cave is one of the mines where we spent an entire morning in June talking about the gold-bearing rocks that are arriving, in large quantities and from far away, to Abangares. Gold in the rocks that is then processed and transformed into bars and ingots.
But this gold is not extracted from rustic tunnels like the one we visited in Guanacaste. Instead, it comes from the deposit in Crucitas, in San Carlos, 225 kilometers (140 miles) to the north.
Samuel isn’t the only one here to point out the arrival of large quantities of “raw” dirt and rocks, loaded with small particles of gold that arrive from Crucitas. The rest of the miners we interviewed during our visits to this Guanacaste town with a mining tradition agree with him. Nowadays, yards have been set up here to process the dirt and stone that is brought from far away using cyanide — almost directly on the ground.
“Sometimes they arrive by car, sometimes they arrive in trucks and sometimes they arrive in dump trucks,” another miner had told us the day before.
“It’s because in Costa Rica, gold is almost only bought here,” said Carlos, one of the miners who accompanied us in the Calle La Mina cave.
A small group of businessmen and miners found a way to take advantage of the abundance of gold and avoid complaints of environmental damage and the police controls that exist in Crucitas: turning Abangares into a new niche where the large volume of illegal gold is processed and sold and then exported from Costa Rica.
The unprocessed material is extracted from the surroundings of Finca Vivoyet, in Crucitas in Cutris, San Carlos, but then they transport it illegally (since it is mineral extracted by methods prohibited by law and transported without permits) to this canton of Guanacaste, where it is processed, bought, sold and exported.
The commercialization of this gold by a group of businesses and some residents of Abangares is not at all invisible or unknown to the authorities. On the contrary, it’s a multi-million dollar business.
These exports left a paper trail of more than $152 million in the last seven years (2017 to 2024), according to data investigated by The Voice, Interferencia de Radios UCR and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Spanish acronym: CLIP) using records in government possession such as the Ministry of Finance’s Unique Customs Documents (Spanish acronym: DUAS).
The result of this story is, most likely, (there are no official studies on the subject) the environmental collapse already documented in Crucitas, its inhabitants and its water sources, is now moving to Abangares.
In this canton of Guanacaste, extracting gold from its mountains by hand in the traditional artisanal way is becoming increasingly arduous and the insatiable thirst for the gold business has pushed many to implement a new processing technique: making small artisanal and illegal wash pools directly on the ground, and — without any further protection for the environment or underground water — they pour cyanide (one of the most dangerous neurotoxins for humans) on them and, in that way, separate the gold from the dirt or the rock. Why do they do this? How do they bring the gold here from Crucitas?
A miner works operating a pulley to move sacks of material containing gold from a ravine to the surface of a street with tunnels. Photo: Rubén F. Román
For months, The Voice of Guanacaste and Interferencia de Radioemisoras from the University of Costa Rica (UCR) investigated how this business operates, the routes, the extraction methods and the main businesses and people involved in exporting gold in handbags and suitcases that ultimately leave directly through the Juan Santamaría Airport.
We visited communities in Abangares, the mines, the processing sites and interviewed multiple sources involved in extracting, processing and selling Costa Rica’s gold, in addition to experts and community leaders in Abangares. This investigation is part of the journalistic alliance Mined Countries, carried out in conjunction with Concolón Magazine in Panama and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Spanish acronym: CLIP).
*****
This morning, a vehicle that passed at high speed in front of the Coopevega police station, in the canton of San Carlos, caught the attention of officers from the Public Force’s Operational Support Group (Spanish acronym: GAO)…. The automobile was a pick-up type, driven by a man with the last name Rodríguez, and accompanied by a woman with the last name Rojas, who were transporting 17 sacks with apparently mining material and three pieces of apparently gold. It’s not ruled out that the material was extracted from the Crucitas area, in Cutris.”
The statement was sent by the Ministry of Public Security on Thursday, July 11. In the photos, it’s nighttime and a red pick-up can be seen with the truck bed loaded with sacks. The man and the woman stand behind the truck with their backs turned, guarded by two police officers.
And on Friday, September 6, similar news circulated: In downtown Abangares, a driver was transporting 16 sacks apparently containing mining material extracted from Crucitas.
Sacks apparently containing mining material that a man was transporting through downtown Tilarán, in Guanacaste. Photo: MSP
During the investigation, multiple people, both in Crucitas and in Abangares, agreed that there are different networks of smugglers who transport the “raw” material, that is, dirt and rocks extracted in Crucitas, to Abangares where it is processed and the gold it contains is extracted.
These testimonies coincide with findings by the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) since 2020, which had detected that illegal gold extracted from Crucitas and Corcovado, in the southern part of the country, was being processed in this canton.
However, police seizures on the road and the investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office into money laundering that led this entity to arrest more than 30 people in 2020 failed to stop the exploitation of gold. Many of the names that appear in judicial file 19-004389-0042-PE, which the Prosecutor’s Office opened in this case, are referred to by the miners of Abangares as some of the people who manage the cyanide wash pools and the export business.
Some of these names also appear on the list of the main gold exporters that The Voice was able to put together with data obtained from the Ministry of Finance.
One of the largest gold exporters in the last two years is the company Metales Abangares J&M S.A., a company that, according to the Ministry of Finance’s records, exported $22 million in gold and whose president is Alejandra Maria Morun Almanzor.
The treasurer of this firm is José Antonio Morun Picado (father of the company’s president), whose brother, José Antonio, Geovanni Morun Picado, appears — according to information provided by the Public Prosecutor’s Office — as a defendant in the investigation being conducted by the Money Laundering Prosecutor’s Office under file 19-004389-0042-PE, in which the alleged crimes of money laundering and illegal mining are being investigated.
Yamill Morún Naranjo is also under indictment in that investigation.
The Voice consulted Alejandra Morún Almanzor about the origin of the gold exported by the company of which she is president. She said that she preferred not to give details about the company’s operation or about the origin of the gold exported by that company.
The Voice spoke by phone with José Antonio Morun Picado and asked him about the quantities of exported gold registered with the Ministry of Finance and about the origin of the gold taken out of Costa Rica, but the treasurer of Metales Abangares stated that he would not give that information by phone and asked that a formal email be sent to him with the identification of the journalist and the media outlet.
A message was sent to his WhatsApp asking for his email address to comply with his formal request and he was also offered the option of holding the interview through a virtual platform but as of the deadline for this article, he had not responded to the messages sent.
The magnitude of the transfer of materials loaded with “raw” gold is enormous since two months before that red pick-up was detained with 17 sacks, the police had also stopped a dump truck with another 250 sacks.
“The largest confiscation of this type of material carried out on board a vehicle since the illegal mining of Crucitas began,” said the statement from the Public Force. As of August of 2024, the confiscation of sediment amounts to 8,000 kilos (17,637 pounds) in 2,636 sacks, according to data from the Ministry of Public Security.
*****
A mere 30 meters (about 98 feet) from where we spoke with Carlos and Samuel, in the cave on Calle La Mina, the river roars because it has been raining in the last few days and the current reminds them that the rainy season is a difficult time for the coligalleros (as traditional miners in this area are called).
On rainy days, like that one, the ground is slippery and using compressors and dynamite is more risky. But even with rain and lightning, they cling to their traditional search for gold in these hills that they are drilling deeper and deeper, digging tunnels in places that are increasingly more remote.
Their advantage is that Abangares is one of the cantons in the country where gold mining is legal. That is, if it is practiced in a traditional “artisanal” and “small-scale” way, according to the Mining Code of Costa Rica.
That is why they were there that June morning. Samuel, 22, had spent a week knocking down walls in this mountain and putting the ore into 200 sacks, about 300 “cajuelas” (a unit of measure for a standard box or basket used in picking coffee), he estimated. Carlos, 39, and the other couple of guys, were helping him to get them out of the ravine that day. First they worked together to make a pulley at the edge of the cave. Then they had to make another one at the top of the ravine.
“It’s that, nearly in all of Costa Rica, gold is only bought here,” Carlos repeats to us.
Photo: Samuel, Carlos and a couple of other miners were extracting sediment with gold in a cave at the edge of a ravine one June morning. Photo: Rubén F. Román
In the past, miners from Abangares — as well as from other parts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua — have gone to Crucitas to search for gold to take advantage of the land loaded with the golden metal. But police operations in the area have increased the risk of being caught in the illegal business and having to face criminal proceedings.
Also, the police have dismantled more than 156 tumblers — a kind of metal drum — which gold miners used to separate the dirt from the metal nuggets, we were told by these miners and others with whom we spoke for this investigation.
Before, here in Abangares, they used to process material only in “rastras” or crushers, machines similar to a mill, in which they separate the gold from the rocks with a process called “amalgamation,” using mercury, a metal that they also obtain clandestinely. And after that process, they sent the leftover material (which still contains small particles of gold and is known as “lamas” or tailings) to the only gold processing plant that exists in the country and that is legally approved for processing mining waste: La Luz Plant, in Abangares.
La Luz Plant in Abangares, the only plant approved to process waste from traditional and small-scale mining in Abangares. Photo: Rubén F. Román
But since the raw material obtained in the surrounding areas of Crucitas is much richer in gold than that of Abangares — and also because that of Abangares is becoming more and more scarce — now the miners process the tailings using cyanide.
With this compound, the miners get much more gold out. With the “rastras” and mercury, they recover up to 35% of the gold present in the raw material, but with cyanide they gain up to 95%. This was explained by the director of Geology and Mines, Ileana Boschini, to the municipal council of Abangares in 2016.
But the use of cyanide in artisanal mining, such as that carried out in Abangares, is completely harmful, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“While global awareness of the risks associated with mercury use in the ASGM [Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining] sector has increased drastically in recent years, improper use of CN [cyanide] is a growing concern,” the entities acknowledge in a 2021 report on the use of cyanide. “CN-associated risks are greatest to people, livestock and wildlife, and inland waterbodies…. CN chemicals or effluent, if spilled into the environment (especially aquatic systems) can result in lethal consequences to fish and other organisms.”
Traditionally, the miners process material in rastras, rotating machines that use mercury to separate gold from rocky and sandy material. Photo: César Arroyo Castro
The testimonies collected and field visits we did in Abangares show that they now apply cyanide in pools or basins built directly on the ground, often without any membrane to prevent the toxins from passing into the subsoil. When they do use something, it is, at most, a plastic that, in practical and professional terms, is equivalent to dumping it without any protection.
“They do it directly on the ground, in a ditch. Let’s say… the stream is running there,” described Carlos, pointing about 50 meters (164 feet) ahead, “and cyanide is a poison! And now with this rain and everything that is falling almost every day, if there is a landslide there and it goes into the stream…”
The health of the miners themselves is at risk because hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN) —which releases if cyanide is mixed with some acid— is extremely dangerous. “If inhaled by humans, the gas can rapidly inhibit function of cellular respiration, leading to asphyxiation. Severe exposure results in headache, coma, seizures, and can result in rapid death,” adds the GEF and UNEP report.
The Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) doesn’t even go into detail about the use of cyanide as a gold separation technique. The “Guide to Good Practices in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Costa Rica,” published in 2023, is blunt in the cyanidation section, when it simply indicates that: “Cyanidation is not recommended for ASGM, since it is a complex industrial process that must be carried out under the supervision of authorized professionals and comply with the requirements and authorizations established in national legislation.”
In Costa Rica, the use and smuggling of cyanide is also reflected in the increase in police seizures. While the Ministry of Public Security seized 10,145 kilos (22,366 pounds) in total between 2017 and 2023 (an average of 1,428 kilos (3,148 pounds) of cyanide per year), between January and August of 2024 alone, seizures of this compound have already amounted to more than 18,000 kilos (39,683 pounds).
In other words, in these last eight months of 2024, the rate of seizures of smuggled cyanide grew by 2,500% since the beginning of this year.
The largest of these confiscations occurred on January 5 of this year, when two men were arrested while transporting 8,000 kilos (17,637 pounds) of cyanide in cylinders in Upala, Alajuela.
*****
At the top of the ravine where Samuel and Carlos work, another of their mining colleagues (mainly dedicated to operating rastras) agreed to speak with this journalistic team. That was unusual. Many of them remain silent when asked questions or say that they don’t want to talk because of the multiple layers of illegality that the business implies: the purchase and use of mercury, dynamite, cyanide and the gold itself.
“I have never been [to Crucitas]. They’ve offered to bring me material and I’ve always said no, because likewise, since it’s not legal, right? One doesn’t want to have any problems,” he said, but admits that the idea can be seductive: up to six grams of gold can be extracted from a cajuela (a volume measurement equivalent to 12.9 kilograms or 28.4 pounds of coffee beans) in Crucitas, while, with a lot of luck, half a gram can be extracted from a cajuela from Abangares.”
“So they come and say, ‘We’ll bring you 100 cajuelas,’ which is half a kilo (1.1 pounds) of gold… You could process it, but it’s risky. In other words, it’s like working smuggling.”
In the town, there is talk of these wash pools or basins. And in fact, some citizens have dedicated themselves to identifying them and have counted six plots of land dedicated to this activity and have submitted their findings and reports to OIJ.
The gold miners in Abangares continue to use rudimentary materials to extract gold, but they also use some illegal ones such as dynamite and mercury. Photo: Rubén F. Román
A miner shows one of the strips of dynamite they use in the tunnels and wells in the mountains of Abangares. Photo: Rubén F. Román
However, no one is sure how many artisanal wash pools have sprung up in Abangares. Carlos estimates that there are between 10 and 20. One of these — they tell us — is located on the edge of the road where these miners work, one kilometer up the mountain.
It’s a piece of land located on Calle La Mina and it’s one of the wash pools that is also included in the citizen reports to OIJ on the subject. During the visit, we weren’t able to go there because it’s private property.
*****
“There are days when a lot of material is moved from Crucitas to here and there are days when it isn’t.”
Daniel is the one who said that. He is a miner, focused mostly on running rastras machines. He talked to us in a house that isn’t his, in Las Juntas de Abangares. He told us that the last time he was in Crucitas was in November of 2023 and that he has only processed material from there “about two times.”
“One doesn’t know how that material is going to arrive, at what time that material is going to arrive, what day they’re going to arrive, what they’re going to arrive in, how they’re going to bring it… Just like it can arrive at noon, they can be arriving at seven,” said Daniel, adding that it depends on police controls that are there in Crucitas and at the points on the route they must pass through.
But he is convinced of one thing: they have to take advantage of the business because Nicaraguans have been the ones who have benefited the most from it — and all of the miners we spoke to agreed with what he said.
“I tell many of them, you know what? I tell them, take advantage and bring material. At least the Ticos have to get something somehow!”
He has received material himself and says that, when he has done so, he charges them the same to process it. Neither more nor less because it’s illegal gold.
“Normally, for an hour of [work using] the rastras, they charge ¢3,500 (currently about $6.67). I charge ¢4,000 (about $7.62) for mine because they are big,” he said and then explains how the business works.
Whoever takes the material out of Crucitas pays someone to transport it to Abangares and make the contacts here to process it. The miner keeps 70% of the profit, while the intermediary keeps 30%.
“If he took out 1 million (about $1,900), [the transporter] gets ¢300,000 (about $570). And the owner of the material gets the rest,” he explained, using conservative numbers as an example, because he said that it’s really normal for them to get up to ¢2 million (about $3,800) in profit.
The other method is that the transporter charges a fixed amount to move the material, which is around ¢700,000 to ¢800,000 (about $1,300 to $1,525). For ¢200,000 (about $380), they contact a “flagman” or “bellman,” who is the one who watches the road they will go through to let them know when it’s free of checkpoints.
As a matter of fact, at the beginning of June, the Minister of Security, Mario Zamora, indicated that they detected that in the Crucitas area, there are up to 538 people dedicated to this task of “bellmen.” And more recently, on August 1, the Public Force arrested a “bellman,” a Nicaraguan who followed the movements of the police with binoculars from Fortuna Hill to alert the gold extraction networks.
Even with the risks, the financial stakes continue to push those involved to take a chance.
“A brave guy, who has balls and courage, can make two trips a week,” said Daniel.
*****
Daniel doesn’t get fully involved in the profitable gold business from Crucitas. First, because it’s risky: If they catch you, they’ll open a legal case against you, he said. Second, because creating the artisanal wash pools — popular in recent months — in which the material is being processed with cyanide now, is not for the poorest miners.
“The process with cyanide takes 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, in order to have the gold in your hands already. On the other hand, with mercury, it’s immediate. And that’s what has happened, that those big guys (referring to miners with more capital) have brought people who have taught them and then they’re now evolving with that.
Of course, these are costs that, for example, a little guy doesn’t have a large amount of land to be able to start working, nor do they have the economic sufficiency to buy the supplies that are used with that, or to make the famous pools that are used for that.”According to him, they haven’t necessarily gotten into this method because of the heyday of Crucitas, but rather because they also manage to extract a little more than usual from the material from Abangares.
“It’s not just about buying and making trenches and putting down plastic and adding cyanide. No. You have to do an endless number of things and it’s illegal to do so. We’re talking about ending up spending, I don’t know, three, four, five million (from $5,700 to $9,500), and it’s money that one does not have. However, the investment is small compared to doing it industrially like the La Luz plant, the only legal one… And aside from that, as a guy told me: “Dude, and it’s not just the fact of using the pools. But rather, it’s also the fact that after you finish, you have to go buy chemicals to be able to dispose of that mud.”
The gold business in Costa Rica is revealed to be very lucrative for a small group, some of them linked to money laundering, according to the investigation that the Money Laundering Prosecutor’s Office has been conducting since 2020, very dangerous for the health of the miners and the drivers who smuggle the raw material and absolutely lethal for the environment and water in Guanacaste.
*Editor’s note: Carlos, Samuel and Daniel are fictitious names used in order to protect the security of the real sources.
Read also the two other investigations:
- The mercury that even the State of Costa Rica doesn’t see
- Gold bars worth more than $152 million left Costa Rica
Journalists: Noelia Esquivel Solano, José Pablo Román Barzuna, Ernesto Rivera, Mercedes Agüero, David Chavarría y Hulda Miranda Picado
Photography: Rubén F. Román y César Arroyo Castro
Design: Carolina Corrales y Miguel Méndez
Data architect: Rigoberto Carvajal
Mined Countries is a collaborative investigation by The Voice of Guanacaste and Interferencia by Radios UCR (Costa Rica), Concolón Magazine (Panama), and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), which takes an in-depth look at gold mining and its consequences in Costa Rica and Panama. Supported by the Cross Border Investigative Journalism Fund (FOPIT, in Spanish).
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