Legislator Leslye Bojorges, with the Social Christian Unity Party (Spanish acronym: PUSC), says that Abangares should be an integrative subject in the possible special joint commission to analyze solutions to illegal mining in Crucitas, in Cutris de San Carlos. In his opinion, if approved, the commission should also discuss the repercussions that the illegal transfer of gold is having in Abangares.
“[The gold] is illegally transferred from Crucitas to Abangares. By solving the problem of Crucitas, the laundering of capital, specifically of gold, between Crucitas and Abangares will be resolved,” the legislator told The Voice of Guanacaste.
The Social Christian Unity Party faction proposes creating a special joint commission that includes legislators and representatives of the Executive Branch, specifically from the Ministries of Security, Environment and the Presidency, who will have a voice, but no vote.
Bojorges assured The Voice that legislator María Marta Carballo (PUSC) would propose creating the joint commission yesterday evening during a meeting at the Presidential House in order to present the motion to create it later in the legislative plenary on Wednesday, September 25.
This, he said, is how progress can be made in resolving the socio-environmental crisis in Crucitas, which also has tentacles in Abangares.
Bojorges revived the issue in the Legislative Assembly days after investigative reporting done by The Voice of Guanacaste, along with interference de Radioemisoras UCR, the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism and Concolón Magazine from Panama, revealed that gold is smuggled to Abangares, processed using new, more polluting and highly toxic methods with cyanide in artisanal wash pools, and sold in the community as if it were gold from the mountains in Abangares.
The investigation revealed that Costa Rica has exported $152 million in gold bullion in the last seven years without paying a single cent in taxes to the country and that, as institutions such as the Ministry of Environment and Energy have admitted, the amount of gold exported is incompatible with the traditional artisanal and small-scale mining permitted in Costa Rica, so clearly gold extracted illegally is being processed and exported.
“The amounts of gold…. show inconsistencies with respect to the amount of gold that could be extracted and exported from a country like Costa Rica, where gold mining is mainly artisanal,” the Costa Rican government has acknowledged in official reports, such as in the National Action Plan for Small-Scale Artisanal Gold Mining, published in 2023 by the Ministry of Environment and Energy.
In conversation with The Voice, Bojorges acknowledged that he did not mention the issue of Abangares in the Assembly, even though he is aware of it.
In Crucitas, it was mentioned to me by members of development associations, a school’s board of education, and they told me that there is illegal gold trafficking between Crucitas and Abangares,” he affirmed.
The Voice also wanted to speak to the leader of the National Liberation Party and president of the Environment Commission, Óscar Izquierdo, about his position on the environmental impact in Abangares, but his press officer indicated that he was out of the country and couldn’t answer questions.
he environmental damage caused by illegal open-pit mining in Crucitas, in Cutris of San Carlos, is also being repeated in Abangares, where gold miners are implementing gold processing methods using cyanide.
Pursuing organized crime in Crucitas
Another bill is also advancing in the Legislative Assembly that seeks to strengthen the Public Ministry’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office. File 23.925 would reform the Forestry Law, the Wildlife Conservation Law, the Fishing and Aquaculture Law, and the Law on the Protection, Conservation and Recovery of Sea Turtle Populations, so that when crimes against these regulations are committed by structures of two or more people, the prison sentence would be increased by 50%.
The Environment Commission ruled favorably on the initiative, with the only negative vote coming from Guanacaste representative Alejandra Larios, who is not part of the commission but participated in substitution of representative Óscar Izquierdo.
Consulted by The Voice, Larios said that she agrees with the project, but that in her opinion, there wasn’t enough clarity regarding the proportionality of the punishments.
“There was a Court criterion that it wasn’t sufficiently clear regarding the proportionality of the sentences,” she said. “But the discussion continues. This was approved and will be seen in plenary and the Court’s consultation will be in the file,” she added.
According to Delfino.cr, its proponent, Broad Front member Ariel Robles, affirmed that this way, the organized crime of illegal mining in Crucitas, which is based on carrying out environmental crimes, could be investigated and punished.
Guanacaste’s Legislators Passive in Face of Pollution in Abangares
Ideas for solutions for Crucitas and Abangares come and go but nothing ends up in actions, while both communities continue to be exposed to socio-environmental crises.
Consulted by The Voice, Guanacaste’s legislator from the party in power, Daniel Vargas, said that he will wait for the bill that the Executive Branch is putting together to regulate the extraction of mining material in Crucitas to put an end to gold laundering and the environmental disaster that is occurring in Abangares.
“A bill is being worked on, it’s almost ready, that would regulate the extraction of gold in Crucitas. That bill will be presented soon. I think that the problem needs to be cured from the source and the problem, as you are describing it, is in Crucitas, not in Abangares,” he told The Voice of Guanacaste about what was revealed in the most recent investigative report, which details how the networks operate that transfer raw material from Crucitas to Abangares, where it is processed and sold.
Since 2020, OIJ and the Public Ministry have carried out multiple raids due to evidence that gold illegally extracted in Crucitas is processed in Abangares, but today, four years later, the business continues: material extracted in Crucitas is smuggled to that canton in Guanacaste through organized networks that end up exposing the population to multiple environmental and health risks.
The Voice also consulted the province’s other legislators about what actions they will take to address the impact that illegal mining in Crucitas is having on Abangares. Social Christian Unity legislator Melina Ajoy said that she would not comment on the subject.
Legislator Alejandra Larios said that investigations should be done and corresponding processes must be carried out so that the illegal trafficking of gold is stopped. “For that, there are administrative and judicial instances in the country. And if the environmental damage is extremely serious, it should be seen that way.”
For his part, Luis Fernando Mendoza, also from the National Liberation Party, admitted that he has heard about the laundering of gold in Abangares, but he doesn’t “know more about the subject” and that, in his opinion, the only thing that can be done is a political control. Larios also pointed out the possibility of applying pressure from a political position in the plenary.
It catches my attention and it seems to me that it’s important to be clear about each one’s areas of action and responsibility…. With the transfer of the material, it would be the police and judicial authorities, and then I think that what could be done there is a political control so that the Executive Power exercises its responsibility by making this technological development and this control,” he said.
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