Q COSTA RICA — Agents from the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) arrested a 22-year-old woman surnamed Ortiz—popularly known as the “Bikini Killer”—this Tuesday; she is suspected of murdering an American man in Guanacaste. ...

RICO’s Q — I can’t remember the last time I ate at McDonald’s—whether in Costa Rica or anywhere else I’ve traveled. It’s just not my thing. Still, a social media post comparing Big Mac prices in Costa Rica and the United States caug...

Q COSTA RICA — Older adolescents and young adults are among the groups most often consuming synthetic drugs in Costa Rica, according to Mario Sánchez, an investigator with the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) Anti-Drug Unit. The warning ...

Q COSTA RICA — Costa Rica has reached a first in its institutional history: the country’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches are simultaneously led by women. The change followed the election of Supreme Court magistrate Patricia Vargas...

Q COSTA RICA — Costa Rican President Laura Fernández has made a pointed case for education as crime prevention: keeping children and young people in school, she says, can help steer them away from criminal networks. But that message is colliding w...

Q COSTA RICA — The president of Costa Rica, Laura Fernández, has argued that education can help prevent crime, using a striking comparison between her own life path and that of the drug trafficker known as “Diablo” — one of the country’s m...

Q COSTA RICA  — On Monday, Costa Rica began moving prisoners to the new maximum-security complex, located within the walls of the La Reforma Institutional Center, a penitentiary complex located in San Rafael de Alajuela, Costa Rica. The first 123 ...

Q REPORTS — Across Central America and the Caribbean, dictatorships and military governments left a lasting imprint on political life. Throughout the 20th century, leaders concentrated power, curtailed civil liberties and used state institutions to...

Q COSTA RICA — Rafael Antonio Valdez García allegedly killed his spouse, Jasmina López Castro, and their 9-year-old daughter, Belkania Balezka Valdez López, in Liberia, Guanacaste. He then made a phone call to a neighbor to notify the police so ...

Q COSTA RICA — Nicaraguans make up 87% of refugee applications in Costa Rica, according to Cindy Molina, head of the Refugee Unit at the country’s Directorate General of Migration and Foreign Affairs. She gave the figure during a meeting with Cos...