By Wendy Anders

Costa Rica’s anti-drug police took to the verdant Talamanca mountains this week with their machetes in hand and destroyed an estimated half a million marijuana plants camuflauged in dense vegetation.

The 3.6-square kilometer area held 48 different marijuana plantations in the indigenous villages of Manzanillo, Alto y Bajo Bley, Cerro Papayo, Arco Iris, Bajo Piedra Meza, Tortuga, Seira, Monteverde, Shörbata and Río Cong among other localities in the Talamanca region of Limón province.

Anti-drug police were aided in locating the fields by the border police, the police intervention unit, the police force in Valle de la Estrella and Guatuso, as well as the air surveillance service (SVA in Spanish), reported the Public Security Ministry.

Costa Rican daily, La Prensa Libre, last year in a report on Costa Rica’s human development noted that the Talamanca county ranks second to last in the country on the human development scale, and is in position 62 of the country’s 81 counties on the human poverty index.

Talamanca’s estimated 1,700 inhabitants live in villages accessible only by helicopter or by trails that take 4-5 days to navigate.

Every three months, the Costa Rican Social Security’s (CCSS) public health officials are flown in to provide basic medical and preventive care as there are no medical facilities nearby.

After alerting to malnourishment among local residents, on their rounds in March, ElPais.cr reported that CCSS staff distributed 1,300 kilos of food that had been donated by the evangelical Christian Vida Abundante Church.

During their rounds in early March this year, medical teams saw 529 patients of whom 129 were children under the age of five, reported ElPais.cr.