Caribbean & Central America - October 2018

Hundreds of Nicaraguans have been killed since the start of anti-government protests in the country in mid-April, the economy has ground to a halt, and tens of thousands have fled the country. Many have headed to Costa Rica, Nicaragua’s neighbour to the south, where tensions are now rising among locals.

In late August, around 500 anti-immigrant protesters descended on a park in the centre of the capital San José, where many Nicaraguan immigrants were sleeping rough. Armed with knives, baseball bats and petrol bombs, they attacked migrants, passers-by, and police, prompting dozens of arrests.

Costa Rica’s Public Security Minister Michael Soto said that the government believes that an “external or internal influence tried to maximize” the protest. Among Nicaraguan refugees, there is widespread belief that President Daniel Ortega has many supporters in Costa Rica, surveilling protest leaders who have fled or fomenting disruptions. Soto said that there is no “conclusive evidence” that Ortega’s government helped organise the protest or has spies on the ground pursuing protesters, “but there’s an expectation that it could occur or is occurring”.

The riot was the most extreme example to date of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in a country that has a reputation for its competent handling of refugees. Costa Rica has long become familiar with mass migrations. In recent years, thousands of Haitians and Cubans transiting north toward the US have gathered in Costa Rica as Nicaragua blocked its border to migrants, prompting government officials to organise airlifts. Venezuelans have also migrated there in large numbers to escape their country’s economic calamity.

Epsy Campbell Barr, Costa Rica’s foreign minister and first vice president, said the government was preparing for the political situation in Nicaragua to worsen as the year draws to a close, possibly pushing many more migrants into Costa Rica, one of the region’s most politically stable and peaceful nations. The Nicaraguan crisis is threatening to become “too big for a country with the conditions of Costa Rica”, she said told the New York Times in an interview. “Sadly,” she added, “it’s not clear when the crisis will end”.

The current surge is just the latest in decades of Nicaraguan immigration to Costa Rica, whose Nicaraguan émigré population numbers roughly 500,000, or about a tenth of the country’s overall population. Some cross the border legally, but other use clandestine routes to avoid the Nicaraguan security forces. Thousands have applied for asylum in Costa Rica, overwhelming the government’s migration bureaucracy, while others have simply disappeared into the broader population.

This year, more than 24,000 Nicaraguans have formally expressed a desire to apply for asylum in Costa Rica, a sharp increase over last year, when about 6,300 people from all nations sought asylum. The backlog is such that new appointments for asylum interviews are being scheduled for next spring, and the government of President Carlos Alvarado has appealed to the international community for help. United Nations (UN) agencies have agreed to provide additional office space and salaries for more migration officials to speed up the work.

Administration officials and their allies worry that the longer the migration crisis persists, the greater the likelihood that President Alvarado’s opponents will use it as a wedge issue to turn public opinion against him, particularly as his tenure is already under pressure following the ongoing strike over tax reform (see next article). Already, some local politicians representing border areas have demanded greater financial assistance from the federal government, to tackle the influx of refugees. The Alvarado administration responded by assuring the country that it was already stepping up security measures, including developing a plan to toughen border control.

• Ortega in Costa Rica

The Nicaraguan community is large and well-established in Costa Rica. Many went into exile, or fled the fighting, during the guerrilla war against the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s. Among those who fled south were Daniel Ortega, who would later become president.