Costa Rica’s president-elect says she will refound the republic. And a deadly centuries-long dispute between two small towns in Guatemala.
COSTA RICA
Fernández hints at foundational changes after presidential win
Throughout much of his term in office, right-wing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has had to fight for survival against a hostile legislature, which vetoed his appointments, blocked or diluted many of his reform proposals and tried to strip him of judicial immunity.
That will no longer be the case for his successor and protégé, Laura Fernández, who won 48.3% of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election, comfortably beating her nearest rival, Álvaro Ramos (33.4%) and surpassing the 40% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
The results earned Costa Rica’s ruling Pueblo Soberano party a simple majority in the next legislature, holding 31 of the assembly’s 57 seats — a steep jump from its current tally of 10. This will be enough to pass ordinary bills without a need for negotiations, though it is still short of the supermajority Chaves was hoping for, which would allow his party to reform the constitution.
According to consultancy firm Prospectiva, fragmentation in the opposition camp will force Chaves and Fernández to negotiate ad-hoc alliances on bills that require qualified majorities, such as constitutional or fiscal reforms, international financing, or the appointment of Supreme Court justices.
Under Costa Rica’s current legal framework, neither Chaves nor Fernández will be allowed to run in 2030, as the country’s constitution requires former presidents to wait two full terms (eight years) before becoming eligible to run again.
👉 Why it matters. The results could mean a lot beyond personal re-election ambitions, as Chaves and Fernández have talked about refounding Costa Rica, creating a “New Republic” that would end the era started in 1948, when the country’s civil war ended and its army was dissolved.
After her win was confirmed, Fernández said she will offer Chaves the Ministry of the Presidency, equivalent to a cabinet chief position, a sign of his continued influence in the upcoming administration. But this was to be expected for a handpicked successor, and her words about their vision for Costa Rica were much meatier:
“Today, February 1, 2026, Costa Rica has closed a period in its political history. What was known as the Second Republic, forged in the battlefields of 1948 with the blood of our ancestors, is now a thing of the past! This is what the Costa Rican people have voted for, and this is why we will have to build the Third Republic,” Fernández told her supporters.
Even without a supermajority that would allow a full redrawing of the country’s institutions, her speech suggested that her administration will be worth following closely, particularly in the current challenging context for the post-1945 liberal consensus, of which Costa Rica has been a leading regional representative.
For nearly eight decades since the end of World War II, Costa Rica forged an identity as a peaceful and democratic welfare state in a much more chaotic neighborhood. Former presidents like Óscar Arias have won Nobel Peace Prizes for mediating in regional civil wars, and the country has advocated causes ranging from environmentalism to gender equality.
Chaves has long held a different vision about this period, arguing that the country was captured by a bipartisan establishment that divvied up high-paying government posts among local elites, based on networking, connections and loyalty, rather than merit.
Critics say that his party’s populist agenda could take an authoritarian turn similar to that of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who consolidated his power and popularity through an iron-fisted anti-crime platform that Chaves and others have sought to imitate. Bukele openly helped Fernández during her presidential campaign.
But crime has not been the sole selling point of the Chaves administration, which saw economic growth averaging 5% during his presidency while unemployment dropped from 12% to 6%, both measurable improvements from the pre-pandemic years — and all of that without expanding Costa Rica’s yearly deficit.
The president-elect vowed to address corruption and the “demagoguery and inefficiency” hidden within state structures, and said that “change will be deep and irreversible,” a promise that will excite her supporters but instill fear in many others.
🔪 Go deeper: A look into the alleged assassination attempt of Rodrigo Chaves
GUATEMALA
A centuries-old spat between two towns gets deadlier by the day
Latin America has had its fair share of border disputes, from Chile’s War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, to Mexico’s gigantic loss of land to the United States, both coming in the 19th century.
Most of these rivalries have involved nations and large armies, but in Guatemala, two small towns have been in conflict for centuries, with neighbors killing and dying over a long-standing spat between two villages.
The story takes us to Sololá, a department in western Guatemala known for its tourist attraction, Lake Atitlán. A three-hour drive from Guatemala City lie the towns of Nahaulá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, whose residents have become true nemeses.
Their conflict dates back to 1862, when Nahualá’s separation from Ixtahuacán sparked disputes over the division of newly established lands. Some experts go even further, arguing that both sides have been clashing since colonial times.
Shared resources such as water, disputed territorial claims and the ownership of communal areas have been driving tension between the towns, both largely home to indigenous groups and rural workers. But the main source of conflict has been unresolved property deeds and municipal boundary limits.
The destructive Hurricane Mitch in 1998 added to the drama, as it destroyed most of Ixtahuacán’s infrastructure, prompting the creation of Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán higher up the mountain, where landslides are thought to be less risky. Many of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán’s inhabitants moved to the new settlement, while a minority stayed in their traditional town.
👉 Why it matters. Despite being a centuries-old dispute, the conflict remains dangerously active. Violence among civilians persists in the modern era, with dozens of victims killed in the last two decades and the ominous addition of organized crime elements into the mix.
Successive national administrations have failed to find a definitive solution to the continued armed clashes. Residents attacked each other with guns, machetes and bombs in 2019, an escalation that resulted in multiple civilian deaths. Then-President Jimmy Morales declared martial law that year, sending the military to pacify the area.
Two years later, 13 people (including four children and a police officer) were killed in the area, an event that international observers described as a massacre, leading to another declaration of martial law. But President Alejandro Giammattei said that the latest attack was “not the product of an ancestral land conflict” but rather of an “illegal group that is armed and organized.”
Giammattei’s words still echoed last year when the latest events in the area brought further signs of organized criminal violence. In December, armed groups attacked Nahuala’s military barracks, took over a police station and kidnapped 15 of its agents, while also blocking roads and hijacking civilian buses.
“The situation reveals a critical shift in the nature of a historical conflict, one that is being exploited by illegal armed groups, endangering the population. This indicates that organized crime has penetrated the territory and is using local structures and tensions for its own criminal purposes,” President Bernardo Arévalo’s government said in an official statement.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
We asked you last week why Uruguay, arguably the most secular country in Latin America, is seeing an uptick in its evangelical Christian population — and where that phenomenon is happening. Roughly 60% of respondents got it right: Evangelicals are spreading along Uruguay’s border with Brazil, due to the encroachment of Brazilian evangelical churches and preachers. We explained that phenomenon early in 2023.
QUICK CATCH-UP
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