Hate bots stir up violence in Costa Rica

Americans are notoriously ignorant about “World News” but we should be tracking on stories like instability in Costa Rica. Reading this, it sounds a lot like the work of the Rusian troll bots who are so adept at getting Trumpers so worked up.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — In a tree-shaded downtown plaza, in Central America’s most peaceful nation, few could have predicted the angry mob.

Hundreds of men dressed in red shirts and jerseys marched into La Merced park carrying knives, baseball bats and glass bottles stuffed with gasoline-soaked rags.

Apparently motivated by false and inflammatory online messages, they had come to confront Nicaraguans who had fled their country and turned the park into a base camp, a place to receive free meals and coffee from local churches and charities.

“Get out Nicas!” the crowd chanted, according to videos posted online later. Fights broke out. More than 40 people were arrested, government officials said.

The confrontation that unfolded on that Saturday afternoon last month has shaken a country known as a relative oasis of peace in a tumultuous region where mass migration and gang warfare are common. The arrival of thousands of Nicaraguans in recent months — fleeing President Daniel Ortega’s violent crackdown on protesters — has laid bare undercurrents of xenophobia in Costa Rica and prompted the first major crisis for President Carlos Alvarado, who had just completed 100 days in office.

His administration is investigating whether Ortega’s government, or its supporters on either side of the border, were involved in fanning the anti-immigrant flames.

“Using social media to call people together who were deliberately inciting hate,” Alvarado said in an interview, “this hasn’t happened before.”

Migration caused by political crises and economic collapse has put enormous strain on Latin America. An exodus of more than 2 million Venezuelans has caused upheaval in Colombia, Brazil and Peru, among others. Although Nicaraguans fleeing across the border constitute only a fraction of that number, the increase has worried government officials and is testing Costa Rica’s generous asylum policies.