Today, I feel that occupational health and safety in Costa Rica resembles that unnamed town on the Colombian Caribbean coast. Since 2014, a report has been published that answers questions such as: who is getting injured, in which regions, and how many days of disability result from workplace accidents, among others. The government publishes it, companies comply—although some do only the minimum—and those of us who work in prevention seek to improve things. Everyone does something, but no one does enough.
The Twins: Data That Announces Itself
The Vicario twins did not hide their intentions. They announced the crime to everyone they met, sharpened their knives in plain sight, and waited in a place where anyone could see them. Something similar happens with occupational health and safety in Costa Rica: the data announces itself every year.
The Occupational Health Statistics reports tell us that between 2022 and 2025, between 114 and 169 people died each year due to work-related causes, and that the same occupations almost always appear on the list: security guards, police officers, cargo truck drivers, agricultural laborers, and construction workers. They also tell us that commuting accidents increased from 7,474 in 2019 to 22,989 in 2025—more than tripling in six years. The warning has been issued, with names and surnames attached.
But there is one detail that often goes unnoticed: the warning is incomplete. In 2025, nearly four out of every ten accidents were recorded as “unclassified,” and in almost half of the cases, it is unknown which object, machine, or substance caused the injury. Furthermore, the classification system currently used for occupational accidents is based on a list recommended by the ILO in 1962 and which the ILO itself called to be replaced in 1998. That same 1998 resolution recommends recording, for example, the means of transportation involved in commuting accidents.
We know that more and more people are being injured on their way to work, but we do not know whether they were traveling by motorcycle, bus, or on foot. It is like knowing that the twins are going to kill someone, but never asking which knife they will use or which route they will take.
Clotilde: The Profession That Raises the Alarm
In the town, there was someone who genuinely tried to prevent the tragedy. Clotilde Armenta, the owner of the store where the twins waited for Santiago Nasar, was one of the few people who took the threat seriously. She tried to dissuade them and asked everyone who passed by to spread the warning. But she had no way to stop them.
Those of us who work in occupational health and safety resemble Clotilde. We know the danger, we see it up close, and we do what we can within each company. And some of it works: if commuting accidents are excluded, the number of occupational accidents relative to the workforce has remained stable in recent years.
But the risk is shifting. The fastest-growing accidents are happening outside the workplace, on the road, during the journey to work. And when we gather as a profession, at conferences and congresses, we tend to speak mostly among ourselves, in our own technical language, and almost always in the Central Valley.
In 2025, outside the Central Region, there was one occupational accident for every five insured workers; in the Central Region, one for every sixteen. Counties such as Los Chiles, Matina, and Siquirres appear time and again among the highest-risk areas in the country.
Clotilde could not stop the twins by herself, but she did the most important thing within her reach: she spoke to everyone who passed by. Perhaps that is our unfinished task as well—to stop talking only among ourselves and start telling everyone what the data is saying, including those who live far from the Central Valley.
The Priest: Companies Occupied Elsewhere
Companies resemble the town priest. They know what is going to happen, but they are busy preparing for the bishop’s arrival—in their case, production targets or sales figures—and they feel that preventing the tragedy is someone else’s responsibility.
It would be easy to say that companies simply do not want to invest in occupational health and safety, but it would be unfair to place them all in the same category. In Costa Rica, two very different realities coexist. There are free trade zone companies, which employ around 200,000 workers, pay salaries that are roughly twice the national average, and generate nearly two-thirds of the country’s exports. And there are micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, which account for 98 percent of all businesses in the country and employ a large portion of the population while operating on very tight margins.
Asking a multinational medical device manufacturer to invest in prevention is not the same as asking a security company competing for the lowest-price contract.
What all businesses do share is a country that works long hours but produces relatively little per hour worked. Costa Rica ranks among the three OECD countries with the lowest labor productivity per hour, while exceeding 2,000 working hours per person annually. In that context, an accident is not just a human problem—it is also a shift someone else must cover, a delayed delivery, or a disruption in operations.
In 2025 alone, more than three million disability days were paid. Prevention, therefore, should not be viewed as an expense reserved for times of financial abundance, but as an essential component of working more effectively. The priest did not need to physically stop the twins himself; he only needed to understand that the issue also concerned him.
The Authorities: Everyone’s Responsibility
In the town, the authorities became aware of the plan. They went looking for the twins, confiscated their knives, sent them home, and considered the matter resolved. They were not indifferent; they simply did what they believed was sufficient.
Costa Rica’s Occupational Health Council is somewhat similar. Every year, it compiles and publishes the data reported by insurance providers to SUGESE. The problem is that these data sets do not communicate with the information the Council itself receives.
Today, we have two sources of information. One is the statistical report, which is built from the data that insurance companies report to SUGESE. The other consists of the dashboards available through the Workplace Centers Portal (PTC), which are fed by reports submitted by occupational health committees and offices directly to the Council.
Not all companies are required to have these structures. Occupational health committees are mandatory in workplaces with ten or more employees, while occupational health offices are required in companies with more than fifty employees. Yet even among those that are legally required to report, compliance is incomplete. In 2025, the Council received annual committee reports from only three out of every ten eligible companies, and office reports from just over half of companies with more than fifty employees.
The PTC dashboards are public and allow some data to be cross-referenced, but they show only part of what is happening: they capture merely one-fifth of the accidents reported by insurance companies. If both sources communicated with each other, we would have a much more complete picture.
The Council has also taken its figures to the public through campaigns such as “Pellízquese en el Brete” (“Wake Up at Work”). It does this with the resources available to it, and that deserves recognition. But these efforts are like taking the twins’ knives away once; in the novel, they simply found others.
The next step is to ask what responsibility belongs to each of us.
To companies, large and small alike, I would ask that they view prevention as an integral part of working better. To large corporations in particular, I would ask that they share what they know with their suppliers and contractors, because the risks that cannot be seen inside the plant often exist in the small businesses that provide services to them.
And to all companies, I would suggest that when hiring security or transportation services, they ask about more than just price. They should ask how those providers care for their workers. Not because the cheapest option is necessarily the most dangerous, but because those are precisely the sectors where fatalities occur again and again, year after year.
And to those of us who work in occupational health and safety, I would ask that we become more active: that we step beyond our technical presentations and explain what the data is telling us in language that anyone can understand.
I include myself in that request. For years, I have watched these reports come and go and read them the way one reads a newspaper—with concern, but without acting. This article is my way of doing what Clotilde did: speaking to everyone who passes by.
García Márquez told us the ending in the very first line, and yet we could not stop reading. The difference is that this story has not been written yet.
Everyone does something, but no one does enough.