Nicaragua

Nicaragua is a Central American nation that was ruled by the Somoza family dictatorship for forty-six years until the Sandinista revolution in July 1979.¹ The country became the focal point of the Contra war and the Dark Alliance drug trafficking network.²

Somoza Era

For the forty-six years the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua, they served as reliable allies of the U.S. government. Anastasio Somoza personally participated in the Central Intelligence Agency's 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government, provided the staging base for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, sent troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965, and contributed Nicaraguan forces to Vietnam.¹

The Nicaraguan National Guard served as Somoza's military, police, and intelligence service - a bulwark against anti-American interests that the U.S. had created in the 1930s and trained at Fort Gulick, Fort Benning, and Leavenworth.

Revolution and Aftermath

Sandinista forces overthrew Somoza on July 17, 1979. Somoza and his inner circle fled to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The National Guard collapsed within hours. National Guard officers who escaped across Nicaragua's borders into El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica formed the nucleus of the Contras, reassembled by the CIA starting in 1980 under Enrique Bermúdez.¹

Contra War

Nicaragua became the battleground for a proxy war between the U.S.-backed Contras and the Sandinista government.² The Contra factions - including the FDN based in Honduras and ARDE and UDN-FARN based in Costa Rica - were deeply infiltrated by drug traffickers, including Norwin Meneses, Danilo Blandón, Marcos Aguado, Horacio Pereira, and others.

Drug Trafficking Hub

The journalist Gary Webb described Norwin Meneses as the Cali cartel's representative in Nicaragua. Danilo Blandón owned hotels and casinos in the country and partnered with Jairo Meneses in operations there. A 1991 seizure of 764 kilos of cocaine in Nicaragua was linked to Blandón. Meneses was arrested in Managua in 1991 and sentenced to twelve years. Georg Hodel and Gary Webb interviewed him at Tipitapa Prison outside Managua in 1996.¹