A human head buried in Bagaces, a charred body on the side of the road in La Cruz, four lifeless bodies in a car near Garza Beach, Nosara; these increasingly recurring images exemplify that violence and homicides in recent years show no sign of abating in the province and the country.
Despite the harshness of the facts, President Rodrigo Chaves assured that “Costa Rica is regaining peace.” He said this in the report he presented to the Legislative Assembly in May. That month, the country ended with 71 homicides, five more than in the same period in 2024, according to data obtained on December 15 from the statistical portal of the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ).
Guanacaste is also far from enjoying the peace referred to by the president: as of December 17 this year, Guanacaste has recorded 75 homicides, two more than in the same period in 2024, according to the latest OIJ data released on December 17.
For Karen Jiménez, coordinator of the Police Sciences program at the State Distance University (UNED), there are four characteristics that exacerbate the problem in Guanacaste.
“It is a coastal province, it is a tourist area, it also has complex socioeconomic elements of poverty, and on top of that, it is a very porous border province. When we mix all these factors with human, drug, and arms trafficking, this generates a very particular criminal economy that requires surgical interventions,” Jiménez believes.
La Voz analyzed statistics from the OIJ website to break down homicides in Guanacaste over the last five years (2021-2025) and spoke with experts to gain a deeper understanding. Here are the five key findings:
(This analysis was conducted based on statistics available on the OIJ website as of December 13, 2025).
1- Districts with the highest homicide rates are coastal areas.
The six districts with the highest homicide rates have in common that they are located on the coast of the province.
Drug trafficking in coastal areas and disputes between drug gangs make these places vulnerable to crime, according to Thais Fonseca, director of the School of Criminology at the Free University of Costa Rica (Ulicori). “Most drug trafficking occurs by sea. So everything related to coasts and borders are very vulnerable points for drug trafficking,” says Fonseca.
Esteban Barboza, a researcher at the Observatory of Tourism, Migration, and Sustainability of the Chorotega Region (Obtur), agrees with Fonseca. “Districts such as Tempate, Nosara, Sámara, and La Cruz are centers for receiving and storing drugs, but also for disputes over those drugs,” he says, adding, “In Tamarindo, after a certain hour, it’s easier to get cocaine than a carton of milk.”
The researcher emphasizes that, in these places, the lack of regulations that encourage uncontrolled real estate development and a culture of corruption create a favorable environment for illicit activities, such as drug trafficking, to flourish.
“It is a product of the type of economic activities that take place in these areas. I’m not saying that tourism in general, but it is a consequence of a system that exacerbates exclusion and inequality,” says Barboza.
The Organized Crime Index, which analyzes crime in 193 countries around the world and is funded by the U.S. government, reinforces Barboza’s thesis.
“Sectors such as construction, real estate, and hospitality are commonly used for money laundering, as traffickers invest in legitimate businesses to hide illicit funds,” says the tool specifically about Costa Rica.
2) 41% of districts in Guanacaste above the epidemic threshold
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if there are 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, crime is considered to be within the epidemic threshold: in the province, 25 districts, spread across the eleven cantons of the province, exceed that threshold.
The homicide rate indicates how many homicides occurred in a given place, based on a population of 100,000 people. This calculation serves to measure the severity of the problem and compare places even though they have different numbers of inhabitants.
For example, in the last five years (from January 1 to December 13 of each year), there were 45 homicides in the district of Liberia, while in Tempate there were 24. However, Liberia has 10 times the population of Tempate, according to estimates by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC). This reflects that the problem of murder is much more serious in Tempate, and therefore its homicide rate is higher.
Although for Karen Jiménez, coordinator of the Police Sciences program at UNED, homicide rates are a valid indicator for measuring the intensity of crime, it is important to understand the characteristics of each territory in order to address the crisis of insecurity in each community.
Less than 5% of the weapons used in homicides in the country are legally registered, according to the Organized Crime Index.Photo: Eka Mora
“We must analyze the context of each community based on a diagnosis of territoriality because the factors in Nosara are not the same as in Alajuelita, for example (…) Until we analyze the problem from a territorial perspective, there will be no effective solution. Public policies address the issue at a general level, but they do not meet the specific needs of each population,” Jiménez points out.
3) Santa Cruz Nicoya and Santa Cruz with the highest number of homicides in Guanacaste
The cantons of Nicoya and Santa Cruz accounted for 46% of homicides in Guanacaste over the last five years.
In 2025, cantonal behavior was uneven across the province compared to 2024: Santa Cruz was the only one of the province’s 11 cantons to record an increase in homicides, rising from 12 to 23 cases, while in the rest of the province the figures remained stable or showed slight declines.
The uptick in Santa Cruz is mainly explained by the increase in homicides in the coastal districts of Tempate, Tamarindo, Veintisiete de Abril, and Cabo Velas, which account for ten of the eleven new cases recorded in the canton in 2025.
4) Five districts had their first homicide in 2025 (between 2021 and 2025)
On January 24, 2025, a vehicle theft resulted in an unusual event in Hojancha: the first homicide in two decades. The last one dated back to 2005 and was the result of a fight between two farmers.
The district of Hojancha was not the only one in Guanacaste to join the list of communities with at least one homicide this year: Belén de Nosarita (Nicoya), Colorado (Abangares), Bebedero (Cañas), and Puerto Carrillo (Hojancha) also made the list.
For Jiménez, the reason lies in the proliferation of criminal gangs throughout Costa Rica. “The Organized Crime Index indicates that ten years ago, the country had 34 organized crime structures; now there are more than 340,” he said.
“With so many drugs, there has been a proliferation of criminal structures that have established a criminal economy that is so lucrative that the expansion of territories for their operations is part of what we are seeing,” Jiménez explained.
Currently, there are still 20 districts in the province that have not had a single homicide in the last five years.
5) Mostly settling scores
Settling scores and revenge were the main motives for homicides in the country and in the province.
This year in Costa Rica, 63% of homicides were motivated by settling scores. In the province, this motive also reflects a majority, with 71% of cases.
Between 2021 and 2025, attacks resulting in more than one death have been recurrent in districts with the highest homicide rates, according to an analysis of the coincidences of days and times of homicides reported by the OIJ.
Nosara, for example, is the district with the highest homicide rate in the country, where half of the victims were killed in multiple attacks, while in Tempate, which ranks second in homicide rates, this occurred in 39% of cases.
For demographer Gilbert Brenes of the University of Costa Rica’s School of Statistics, the concentration of violent episodes with more than one fatality completely changes the type of challenges faced by authorities.
“Most of the homicides we had before were arguments in a bar where someone pulled out a machete or a knife and killed the person in front of them in the fight. But when there is more than one death in the same incident, it shows that the phenomenon is becoming more complex from a security policy perspective,” explains Brenes, who worked in statistics at the OIJ in 2022.
Comments