Historically, Costa Rica is much safer than other so-called retirement havens in Latin America
Let’s look at Mexico:
Supposedly, over 1 million Americans are living in Mexico many of whom are retirees from the U.S. and Canada. Although very few are victims of violent crime, they live in a country where wanton violence is an everyday occurrence.
More than 500,000 people have died as a result of organized crime violence since 2006. And more than 100,000 people have disappeared.
Around 500 women were killed in Juarez City in northern Mexico between 1993 and 2011. In 2023 852 more women were murdered.
Just last week, five dismembered bodies were found scattered on a street in Acapulco, with one of the victims being a candidate for a town council seat in the nearby town of Coyuca de Benítez. Mexican drug gangs frequently kill their victims by asphyxiation, either by strangling them or wrapping duct tape or plastic bags around their heads, according to The Associated Press.
Ten years ago, 43 students were savagely killed and their bodies burned.
Crime and violence are widespread. Armed groups operate independently of the government in many areas of the state of Guerrero, the State Department warns. “Members of these groups frequently maintain roadblocks and may use violence towards travelers. U.S. citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents have been victims of kidnapping in previous years.”
Recently, 3 surfers from Australia and the U.S. were brutally killed in Mexico’s Baja California.
Thirty- six (36) candidates for the upcoming local public offices have been murdered this year.
Finally, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, at least 141 have been killed in recent years.
Colombia
Winston Churchill said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Colombia has become popular with both tourists and retirees. The country is very affordable for foreigners, beautiful, and culturally rich. But….its history has always been filled with extreme violence.
For example, a liberal presidential candidate, Joge Eliércer Gaitán, was assassinated in 1948. His death plunged the country into darkness. Liberals blamed the conservatives for the assassination. A ten-year conflict ensued between liberal and conservatives which left between 100,000 and 200,000 people dead. This was just the tip of the iceberg.
In the 1960s the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was founded. Furthermore, the ELN and M-19 were two other guerilla groups that were formed around the same time to fight against Colombia’s social inequities— extreme poverty and exploitation of the masses by the wealthy elite.
The FARC was the oldest and most important guerrilla group in the Western Hemisphere with over 16,000 soldiers many of who were children forced to fight, and for a long time, they financed their political and military battle against the Colombian government through kidnapping, extortion, and participating in the drug trade on various levels.
As of April 2022, there have been 9,263,826 victims of the Colombian conflict, with 2,048,563 of them being children. Approximately 80 percent of those killed in the conflict have been civilians.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Pablo Escobar and other cartels reaped havoc on the country.
Add to this mess right-wing paramilitary death squads, secretly funded by the rich landholders, that killed many innocent civilians because they were suspected members of the FARC.
In Colombia, there are currently three separate groups that go by the name of FARC: the political party; the ‘FARC dissidents’, a group that refused to join the peace agreement and continued to fight the government.
It is curious to note that, Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, was a member of a guerrilla group at one time.
Costa Rica an island of sanity in a mad world
Costa Rica is a country that lives up to its national motto, pura vida or everything is good in life. The country prides itself in being Latin America’s oldest democracy and that has always respected human rights. Most people know that Costa Rica abolished its armed forces on December 1, 1948. It has never experienced the widespread and endemic violence of Mexico and Colombia. It’s just not in the DNA of the country.
It is no wonder that together with its natural beauty, wonderful peace-loving people who welcome foreigners and unblemished international reputation, it has become one of the most popular retirement havens in the world. More Americans live here per capita than any other country in the world. They cannot be wrong. Furthermore, Costa Rica is considered the best place to retire in 2024: https://apple.news/A4JohOpneTmajfkhAlhqQUg
Recently, there has been an increase in crime because of drug trafficking. Traffickers realized that because of the country’s geographical location, it in the world was easy to use as a transit point for shipping their products to North America and Europe. Local authorities with the help of the U.S. are trying to put an end to this situation. The country basically “got caught with its pants down” and was not prepared.
Remember no country is crime-free. Utopia does not exist. However, I would have not lived here for over 40 years if I thought it was dangerous.
