Troilo Sanchez

Troilo Sánchez Herdocia was a playboy brother of FDN leaders Aristides and Fernando Sánchez who served as a cocaine supplier for Norwin Meneses's Contra drug network. The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified him in November 1982 as a source of cocaine for the Frogman drug ring in San Francisco.¹

Background

Troilo had been a partner of Norwin Meneses in one of Norwin's nightclubs in Managua and was one of his drinking buddies. A pilot, Sánchez claimed he flew for the Central Intelligence Agency in Nicaragua in the early 1960s during preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was partly staged from Nicaragua. By the late 1970s he was a hopeless drug addict, spending large sums of his family's fortune on heroin, cocaine, women, and gambling. The Sandinistas seized what remained, and Troilo and his wife Isanaqui fled to Costa Rica, where they became partners with Norwin Meneses in a bean-processing factory.²

Norwin Meneses described the relationship as familial: "We are like family. [Isanaqui] came many times to visit my brother Mundo, who was a general and the police chief of Managua and was later assassinated in Guatemala for the Sandinistas."²

Role in Contra Drug Trafficking

In December 1981, Troilo and Horacio Pereira met with Carlos Cabezas in Costa Rica and proposed selling cocaine to raise funds for the Contras. The FBI identified Troilo as operating out of Costa Rica alongside Horacio Pereira and Fernando Sánchez as a source of cocaine for the San Francisco drug ring. Former Contra official Leonardo Zeledón Rodríguez told UPI in 1986 that "Troilo sold 200 pounds of cocaine and received $6.1 million for it."²

Legal Troubles

Troilo was arrested on drug charges in Costa Rica in the mid-1980s but was acquitted. He recovered from his drug addiction and was living in Nicaragua as of 1998.¹