Away from the circles of power of Sandinismo, Dionisio Marenco, former mayor of Managua remembered for good management, died on Tuesday at the age of 73 due to respiratory problems. If anyone knew very well Daniel Ortega that was him. From the unruly years of the sixties, when they were awkward young men who dreamed of taking the Somocista dynasty in Nicaragua, Marenco and Ortega forged a friendship almost sealed in blood, which would remain firm over the years, would be sustained during the harsh revolutionary period of the eighties —with a country bled to death by a civil war promoted from Washington and with a economy of misery— but that would end up broken once Ortega, become leader of Sandinismo, returned to power in 2007 precisely thanks to that shrewd political operator who was Marenco. It was a criticism of the mix of party, family and State of an Ortega who no longer hid his authoritarian forms which earned “Nicho” – as he is known in Nicaragua – ostracism. Ortega’s response was clear: “shoemaker to your shoes,” he snapped. But his wife’s, Rosario Murillo, turned into powerful adviser of the husband, was more forceful. “Traitor,” he called.
With him go many secrets of Sandinismo and especially of Ortega, who has established in Nicaragua an autocracy similar to the one he helped overthrow in 1979, when the Sandinista revolution triumphed. Marenco was the right hand man of Ortega, its most important political operator. He once told this reporter how Ortega, then leader of the opposition after the defeat of Sandinismo in 1990, called him at any time to appear in El Carmen, the caudillo’s bunker, to structure, among liters of alcohol, the strategies to allow him to return to power. No one close to Ortega could refuse to participate in these gatherings, Marenco said. He also knew the ills that afflict the Sandinista: he told how he fainted in his hotel room due to a heart problem during an international tour, when Ortega was still recognized by the Latin American left. He explained, with laughter, the difficulties he had to run to obtain medical care without raising public attention, because since then the caudillo’s ill health has been an insurmountable secret.
Born on September 17, 1946 in the colonial city of Granada (in southern Nicaragua), Marenco was for a time a seminarian, but found his political vocation very soon, when he became a student leader at the Central American University (UCA) of Managua, a Jesuit campus that was then a hotbed of anti-Somocista. The young Marenco was a born agitator, capable of organizing his university colleagues to paralyze the UCA. It was during those years that he met Ortega, who spent a brief period at the university without finishing it, because he became involved in the urban strategy of the guerrillas against the dictatorship. With the defeat of the dynasty, Marenco led the negotiations for the surrender of the dreaded National Guard, the Army of the dictatorship that had been formed and trained by the United States. In the eighties, during the revolutionary government, he was minister, the closest to Ortega. “We were very confident,” he told journalist Fabián Medina in an interview. With the defeat of Sandinismo, Marenco would become the campaign manager of an Ortega desperate to return to power. He remained loyal at times when the Sandinista Front was cracking due to internal voices calling for a democratic opening, including that of Sergio Ramírez, former vice president, who in 1995 founded the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS) together with other Sandinista intellectuals.
Perhaps the most important role was played by Marenco in 1998, when secret negotiations began with the then president. Arnoldo aleman, whose objective was to form a bipartisan system in Nicaragua, with Ortega and Alemán sharing all the powers of the State. In those lock-ups, known in Nicaragua as “El pacto”, Marenco was one of the main operators of Ortega, the one who negotiated a reform that changed the percentage necessary to access the Presidency, from 45% to 35%, which it undoubtedly benefited Ortega, whose electoral ceiling was 38%. The journalist Medina remembers that Ortega, when leaving the meeting where the reform was agreed, asked Marenco in surprise: “Why did the fat man give in [Alemán] this?” During the conservative Administration of Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007), Alemán was accused and sentenced to 20 years in prison for robbery of the State, which changed the balance of forces with Ortega, whom the former president became guilty of had to give up more power in exchange for being dismissed.
Marenco was mayor of Managua – the main political plaza in Nicaragua – for the Sandinista Front from 2004 to 2008 and is remembered for good management, which brought him a high level of approval, with more than 80% of the capitals recognizing his work. That enormous popularity began to raise blisters in El Carmen, where little by little Marenco was losing influence, mainly due to the rejection of Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife who saved him from a political death when his daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, publicly accused Ortega of having raped her when she was 11 years old and he was the president of Nicaragua. Murillo dismissed Zoilamérica as crazy and denied the abuses. Since then she became the chief adviser to the caudillo, so much so that later Ortega would appoint her vice president. It was precisely because of the criticism of this confusion between the family and the party and the government that Marenco de Ortega was distanced. The caudillo blurted out that “shoemaker to your shoes” and Murillo would publicly call him a “traitor”. That breakup hurt Marenco, who later confessed in an interview with the newspaper La Prensa: “I feel like my brother was dead.”
–
In EL PAÍS, dozens of journalists work to bring you the most rigorous information and fulfill your public service mission. If you want to support our journalism and enjoy unlimited access, you can do it here for € 1 the first month and € 10 the following month, with no commitment to stay.
