Podcast: DEA Hits Costa Rica Ex-Intelligence Chief with Narco Charges

The following is a transcript of episode 41 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

CHAVES: The arrest of three international criminals, which I am ashamed to say includes a person who reached the highest levels of the judiciary…

GRESSIER, HOST: On June 25, as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited Costa Rica, the DEA had days before announced its withdrawal from Nicaragua, citing a lack of resources to fight drug trafficking. Now, President Rodrigo Chaves acknowledged the arrest of a former intelligence and security chief, Celso Gamboa, brightening the light on just how far U.S. prosecutors publicly assert that drug trafficking has penetrated the Central American political class.

Models of order and discipline

But first, we go to El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele is upping the military discipline felt across Salvadoran schools while taking tighter control of the national hospital system.

On August 14, Bukele named Army Captain Karla Trigueros as minister of education. This raised more than a few eyebrows: She was in uniform, flanked by two caped soldiers posing with assault rifles. It was “a true déjà vu from the seventies, and a glimpse of what might come,” wrote Óscar Picardo, the new editorial director of the newspaper El Diario de Hoy, referring to years when El Salvador was ruled by military regimes.

Four days later, on Monday, the minister of education issued a directive to all public schools to tightly control uniform cleanliness and haircuts, and to obligate students to greet their teachers upon arrival. School principals, she instructed, are to be “models of order and discipline.”

In recent days, state media outlets have avidly reposted pictures of her traveling to schools in a camo working uniform, and were quick to highlight that some private schools voluntarily announced their own compliance with her decree.

Trigueros created her official X account this month. Bukele, whose bio reads “Philosopher King” and most of whose officials are chronically online, framed the minister’s appointment as part of a “profound transformation” of education: “If we want to construct the country we deserve, we must break paradigms.”

[newsletter]

The move certainly flew in the face of democratic tradition: Both the 1983 Constitution and 1992 Peace Accords sought to wrest political control from the military into civilian hands. But it wasn’t entirely a “new idea”: Starting a decade and a half ago, the two FMLN governments put military leaders in charge of the National Civil Police. Upon taking office in 2019, Bukele continued the practice of using soldiers for civilian security.

Picardo wrote that militarization is “a prelude to the hardening of the state apparatus. The entry of the boots into the classroom is not an innocent act, but rather part of a broader trend: the military colonization of civilian spheres.”

For now, education unions —who are one of the few collectives capable of convening large protests— are publicly tip-toeing around the new minister. And that caution starkly contrasts with doctors’ unions’ very public criticism in recent days of a parallel initiative by Bukele: the creation of a National Network of Hospitals.

Canal 10, the regime’s television station, claimed that a new law approved Wednesday will create a “decentralized and autonomous” network of public hospitals. So decentralized and autonomous, in fact, that according to the text of the law, the network’s executive director will be chosen by Bukele.

The new law, approved without public notice or political debate, will simultaneously allow the network to compel “priority and special” services from private facilities. According to La Prensa Gráfica, medicine will be purchased bypassing legal procurement controls and some services will be concessioned. But Canal 10 glowed that doctors from “the first world” may now be hired in El Salvador without standardizing their medical degrees.

[rel1]

The doctors’ union and scarce political opposition —recall that, following gerrymandering and electoral rule-changing, there are only three legislators from the Vamos and Arena parties— criticized the new law. Claudia Ortiz, of Vamos, described it as authoritarian, while doctors’ unions warned of new avenues for corruption. They all pointed to the new law’s ambiguity about when private services can be commandeered.

The president of the Medical College, Iván Solano Leiva, perhaps expressed it best. He recalled events just this May, when a major highway to San Salvador collapsed and Bukele ordered private bus drivers on social media to provide free service. When some refused, a dozen and a half were arrested, and one soon died in prison under opaque circumstances.

That type of “discretionality”, he euphemized, could happen all over again.

The gambit of top posts

Now, to Costa Rica. On Thursday morning, a former appellate judge and intelligence chief, Celso Gamboa, arrived in court to review a request to extradite him to the United States on drug trafficking charges. The U.S. Embassy delivered the request to a criminal court in San José on August 14.

This is thanks to a reform of the Costa Rican Constitution in May, which establishes that Costa Rican citizens involved in crimes related to drug trafficking can be extradited. The former magistrate was named in a federal indictment and charged with manufacturing and distributing cocaine, according to the Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Texas.

Gamboa was arrested in a joint operation on June 23 by the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) and the DEA and placed in provisional detention, But his public career ended long before that: In 2018, he was dismissed from the judiciary by the Legislative Assembly on suspicion of corruption.

Gamboa’s case is all the more startling given that he ran the gambit of senior security posts. From 2010 until 2018, he was deputy minister of public security, deputy minister of the Presidency, and director of intelligence in the administration of Laura Chinchilla. He was also minister of public security in the administration of Luis Guillermo Solís, as well as deputy attorney general.

According to the U.S. Treasury, starting around 2020, Gamboa used his government contacts acquired during his public career “to acquire information about ongoing counter-narcotics investigations. He subsequently sold this information to the targets of those exact investigations.” They also reported that Gamboa laundered money through his companies, including Limón Black Star FC, a soccer club in Costa Rica’s second division.

[rel2]

U.S. prosecutors allege links to the current government of Rodrigo Chaves. El País reported that U.S. authorities accuse Gamboa of informing the administration in September 2023 that he had “the means to guarantee the entry of cocaine into the country.”

If convicted, Gamboa would face 10 years to life in federal prison. Regardless of the outcome, he would already have the dubious distinction of becoming the first Costa Rican extradited to the United States. Former President Luis Guillermo Solís applauded Gamboa’s arrest. His predecessor, Laura Chinchilla, wrote on X that no one, in the end, is above the law.

Roman Gressier and Yuliana Ramazzini wrote today’s episode, with production and original soundtrack by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.