Roger Mayorga

Roger Mayorga was a former Sandinista intelligence officer who headed criminal investigations for the Nicaraguan National Police narcotics unit and monitored Meneses for years. Mayorga's knowledge of the Meneses drug organization and its Contra connections provided crucial law enforcement perspective on the trafficking network.¹

Tracking Meneses

Mayorga, a short, stocky man with hard eyes, had been chief of state security in Meneses's hometown of Estelí. He was well acquainted with Norwin and his family and the work they had done for Somoza and the Contras. Mayorga investigated Meneses's cocaine operation in Managua, which led to the 1991 raid that seized 725 kilos of cocaine and resulted in Meneses's conviction and thirty-year sentence. Mayorga played a key role in the arrest of Enrique Miranda, Meneses's former aide, whose testimony about Meneses's Contra-connected drug dealings became central to the Dark Alliance narrative.²

CIA Connections

Mayorga believed Meneses was actually working for the Central Intelligence Agency in Costa Rica, using his role as a DEA informant as a cover for his real tasks. "They used Meneses in Costa Rica basically for money laundering operations," said Mayorga, whose years of surveillance gave him detailed knowledge of Meneses's activities and connections. He traced Meneses's association with Colombian drug suppliers back to an airplane full of marijuana that made an emergency landing at a ranch owned by one of the Somozas, an event that launched Meneses into the major leagues of drug trafficking.³