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Good Morning from Costa Rica
Costa Rica’s new maximum-security prison for organized crime is days from handover. The Justice Ministry says the facility, modeled on El Salvador’s CECOT, will start operating in October with room for up to 5,100 inmates and rules far stricter than anywhere else in the system.
Also this week: British Airways made its London route year-round and moved it to Heathrow, the government doubled down on its break with Cuba, Costa Rica landed on Washington’s drug transit list for another year, and manufacturers say the strong colón is now costing jobs.
This Week By the Numbers
5,100 — maximum inmate capacity at the new CACCO prison
5 — weekly British Airways flights between Heathrow and San José from October, up from 3
23 — countries on the U.S. major drug transit list, Costa Rica among them
13.3% — manufacturers surveyed that have already cut staff because of the exchange rate
$45.9 million — the value at which a court froze Quaker’s Costa Rican trademarks
106,875 m² (1.15 million sq ft) — new residential construction in Garabito, home to Jacó, in 2024 alone
The Top Story
CACCO is being built inside the La Reforma complex in Alajuela.
Costa Rica’s new high-security prison for organized crime is expected to be handed to the government by the end of September and to begin operating in October. Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar told a government council meeting in Cartago that the Centro de Alta Contención del Crimen Organizado, known as CACCO, would be ready within 15 days.
The facility sits inside the La Reforma complex in San Rafael de Alajuela and draws heavily on El Salvador’s CECOT, the mega-prison built under President Nayib Bukele, which supplied the plans used as a reference. It will hold up to 5,100 inmates across five modules, each with 17 cells built for 60 prisoners, at an overall project cost of about ₡21 billion.
Conditions will be far tighter than in the rest of the system. Inmates get one hour outdoors, can be isolated for up to 48 hours after a disturbance, and wear uniforms made without pockets, elastic or cords so phones, drugs and weapons are harder to hide. The Fernández administration says the goal is to cut off criminal leaders who have kept running their organizations from behind bars.
The project is running late. It was originally given 195 days of construction, which would have meant completion in July. Work began in January under former President Rodrigo Chaves, and the government expects the facility to relieve some of the overcrowding elsewhere once it opens.
More News
The route moves from Gatwick to Heathrow in October
If you have ever tried to fly direct between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom in June, you know the route only existed in the European winter. From October, British Airways will fly London–San José all year, with flights scheduled continuously through September 2027.
Frequency rises to five flights a week from October through March, up from three, then drops back to three a week from April through September instead of stopping. The winter flight leaves Heathrow at 11:10 a.m. and lands at Juan Santamaría at 4:40 p.m., on a Boeing 787-8 with 204 seats.
The airport switch matters as much as the schedule. Heathrow feeds more than 130 British Airways destinations, so travelers starting in Manchester, Edinburgh, Dublin or Frankfurt can now reach San José on one ticket with one stop. The Costa Rican Tourism Institute says the move also adds cargo capacity to Europe.
Havana says it learned of the break through the news.
Foreign Minister Manuel Tovar Rivera spent the weekend defending Costa Rica’s diplomatic break with Cuba, calling the island’s government a tyranny and saying relations are broken until freedom returns. He made the remarks in Miami, where he received the 2026 Pedro Luis Boitel International Freedom Prize at Miami Dade College on September 19.
Havana’s foreign ministry says it learned of the decision through news coverage. It points to a March 17 diplomatic note in which Costa Rica closed its embassy in Havana and asked Cuban diplomats to leave San José, while telling Cuba explicitly that those steps were not a break in relations.
Cuba called the choice to announce it through a South Florida newspaper rather than diplomatic channels an act of subordination to U.S. policy. Tovar says it was a sovereign decision made without advice from any other government. At home, Costa Rica’s Communist Party has accused President Laura Fernández of servility toward Washington.
Geography, not government failure, keeps Costa Rica on the list.
Costa Rica is one of 23 countries on Washington’s 2027 list of major drug transit or producing countries, submitted to Congress by President Donald Trump on September 15 and announced by the White House the next day.
The designation is not a verdict on the government’s effort. The U.S. places countries on the list when geography, trade routes or economic conditions make them attractive to traffickers, even when they cooperate closely with Washington. Only four countries — Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma and Colombia — were found to have failed demonstrably to meet their drug-control obligations, and Costa Rica was not among them.
It is also nothing new. Costa Rica was first designated a major transit country in September 2010 and has appeared on the list repeatedly since.
Year-round residents are drawing national chains to the Central Pacific.
Jacó has run on surf, hotels and weekend visitors from San José for decades. Now more people live there year-round, and national chains are betting on customers who show up every day rather than only in high season.
McDonald’s is preparing a restaurant on Avenida Amapola near Costa Nera and has already held two job fairs in town, though no opening date has been announced. Fresh Market has opened at Plaza Comercial Costa Nera, KFC moved to a larger spot closer to the highway in a roughly $500,000 investment, and bakery chain Mocapan chose Jacó for its first store outside the Greater Metropolitan Area.
Construction explains the shift. Garabito, the canton that includes Jacó, recorded 106,875 square meters (about 1.15 million square feet) of new residential construction in 2024.
Quaker products remain on shelves while the case continues.
A San José civil court has ordered a hold on more than 100 Costa Rican trademarks owned by The Quaker Oats Company, the PepsiCo subsidiary, in a dispute with a former local distributor that dates back 14 years. The hold was entered at the Intellectual Property Registry on August 25.
The measure is a financial safeguard rather than a seizure of the business. Because final damages have not been set, the court froze brands including Vita Quaker, Quaker Cocoa Blasts and Quaker Avena Instantánea at a value of up to ₡20,649 million, roughly $45.9 million, so they remain available to cover any payment. The claim stems from Quaker ending its distribution relationship with the Costa Rican company in 2010.
Quaker says its products continue to be sold through its usual channels and that it trusts in due process. In court filings it called the enforcement request legally unfounded and grossly exaggerated. The distributor says it is seeking only the compensation the courts ultimately set, not control of the brands.
Quick Hits
Costa Rican TikTok creator Julián Valverde is in ICE custody in Florida. Valverde, 26, known online as Julián Valjota, was detained in Orlando. The circumstances and his immigration status have not been made public, and the Consulate General in Miami says it is making inquiries.
A record-quiet Atlantic does not mean a calm Costa Rica. No Atlantic hurricane had formed by September 12, the latest date since reliable satellite tracking began in 1966, as El Niño-driven wind shear tears storms apart before they organize.
Encanto the jaguar is back on camera. Last photographed on the Osa Peninsula in May 2023, the cat turned up again on a Fundación Las Oncas camera trap in April, identified by its unique rosette pattern.
National Geographic Traveller heads up the river to Yorkín. The Bribri village in the Talamanca Mountains grows about 70% of what it eats, and a women-led association founded in 1992 has built its economy around cacao.
Experts pick Costa Rica as the best wellness trip after 50. Travel + Leisure’s panel pointed to hot springs, flat trails and wildlife tours that do not require a strenuous hike.
Panama again invites China to join the Canal Neutrality Treaty. About 40 countries have signed the protocol, Taiwan among them, which Beijing has cited as its reason for staying out.
Should U.S. troops be on the ground here? In an Independence Week column, a dual citizen argues that President Laura Fernández’s openness to a U.S. military presence would be a mistake, and does not spare himself in making the case.
Spotlight
Unemployment is low, but fewer people are working than before the pandemic.
Costa Rica’s 6.7% unemployment rate looks healthy until you look at who is actually working. Labor force participation sits at 54.3%, down from around 60% in 2022, and the country had about 44,000 fewer employed people in mid-2026 than in February 2020 despite a larger working-age population. Women account for most of the drop.
Manufacturers say the colón is now making it worse. The monthly average exchange rate fell about 34% between June 2022 and May 2026, so every dollar of export revenue converts into far fewer colones to cover wages and bills. In a Chamber of Industries survey of 115 companies, 70.2% named the exchange rate as a drag on competitiveness, the most-cited concern.
About 13.3% of those companies have already cut staff because of it, rising to 23.1% in free trade zones. Roughly 31% have suspended expansion plans, and nearly half of free-zone firms have put investment on hold. The same squeeze that trims a dollar pension here is now showing up in payrolls.
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