Horacio Pereira

Horacio Pereira Lanuza, known as "La Burra" (a female donkey), was a drug dealer and gambler from Estelí, Nicaragua, who served as the primary Costa Rican cocaine broker for Norwin Meneses's organization and the conduit for drug funds from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Contras in Costa Rica and Honduras.¹

Background and Connection to Meneses

Pereira and Norwin Meneses had been business partners before the revolution, owning cattle and cattle ranches together. Both were from Estelí, where Pereira controlled gambling clubs. They had known each other since childhood. Pereira fled to Costa Rica after the Sandinistas took power and became one of Meneses's top cocaine dealers there.²

The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified Pereira in November 1982 as a source of cocaine for the Frogman drug ring in San Francisco.²

Role in the Contra Drug Network

In December 1981, Pereira and Troilo Sánchez met with Carlos Cabezas in Costa Rica and proposed selling cocaine to raise funds for the Contras. Pereira represented UDN-FARN and the FDN in Costa Rica and stated that the Central Intelligence Agency would control the delivery of drug money.²

When Pereira grew suspicious that Julio Zavala's heavy drinking was jeopardizing Contra funds, he cut Zavala out of the operation and insisted that Carlos Cabezas personally assume responsibility for the money, "because the money belonged...to help the Contra revolution." Pereira devised the smuggling method of hiding cocaine inside Peruvian woven baskets, with each basket containing about a kilo concealed within wax-coated strings in the framework.²

Cabezas delivered drug money to Pereira or FDN logistics officer Joaquín "Pelón" Vega in Honduras. On one occasion Cabezas and another person delivered approximately $250,000 to Pereira and Sánchez. Costa Rican authorities described Pereira as the biggest cocaine trafficker in their country during the early 1980s.²

Arrest and lenient treatment

On December 2, 1982, Pereira was arrested in Miami boarding Air Florida Flight 473 to Costa Rica with $70,000 he had failed to declare. An FBI informant named Donald Peralta had tipped off the bureau. Despite being known to the FBI as a major international cocaine trafficker, Pereira was released after paying a small fine. He returned to Costa Rica and immediately resumed drug trafficking.²

Death

Norwin Meneses stated that Pereira was murdered in Guatemala in the early 1990s.¹