The now ex-foreign minister of the dictatorship, Dennis Moncada, a retired brigadier general of the Nicaraguan Army, is remembered within the ranks of the FSLN for reasons that have nothing to do with heroic actions but negative ones, such as being “careless”, self-conscious and lacking the initiative to act with a firm attitude; now he will also be remembered for having been a blindly loyal pawn of Ortega and Murillo, and despite that he was discarded, removed from the Foreign Ministry to put in his place another loyalist, Valdrack Jaentscke.
This Friday, September 6, in La Gaceta Official Gazette, Daniel Ortega publishes Presidential Agreement 160-2024, which, in its article one orders, “to appoint Denis Ronaldo Moncada Colindres as Minister Advisor to the President of the Republic for Policies and International Affairs.”
The same agreement, in its second article, establishes that, with the new appointment, Moncada Colindres is automatically dismissed as “Minister of Foreign Affairs”, contained in Presidential Agreement 01-2017, dated January 11, 2017.”
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The Ortega-Murillo regime claims that Moncada is relieved of his post “for health reasons.” He had been in charge of the Foreign Ministry since January 2017. Between 2007 and his appointment to the Foreign Ministry, he was the regime’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), where he is remembered for having viscerally attacked all the countries that criticized the dictatorship he represented, reading speeches sent from Managua, with content loaded with undiplomatic phrases, typical of the vice-dictator Rosario Murillo.
In the Official Gazette of this Friday the Presidential Agreement 161-2024 is also published, by which the dictator appoints Valdrack Ludwing Jaentschke Whitaker as the new foreign minister of the dictatorial regime of Nicaragua. Both dismissals and new appointments had already been announced a day earlier by the vice-dictator Murillo.
Moncada “the careless” who facilitated the escape of a CIA spy
Moncada rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Nicaraguan Army, which he joined in 1979, following the rise to power of the Sandinista guerrilla group to which he belonged.
His first military rank was lieutenant, and his first position was as a “politician” in Matagalpa, but from there he began a dizzying rise in ranks and promotions in positions that led him to become in just 5 years a major and member of the General Staff of the Army, as Auditor General of the Sandinista armed forces.
By 1990, when the first Sandinista dictatorship lost power, Moncada was already a lieutenant colonel and was still in charge of the military audit and it was then that he ingratiated himself with the then head of the military institution, Humberto Ortega, whose escort murdered the teenager Jean Paul Genie.
Moncada, as auditor general, learned of the case and ordered it to be closed, arguing that the perpetrators had not been fully identified. By the end of the 1990s he was promoted to colonel and shortly before his retirement in 2004, he was promoted to general.
Unlike other retired Sandinista military officers, who are said to have committed guerrilla exploits, Moncada is said to have never fought and to be responsible for the escape from Nicaragua of the top spy for the United States government in the highest spheres of Sandinism in the 1980s.
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Some time ago, Article 66 built a Moncada profilein which some former guerrillas who knew him and a psychologist talk about the carelessness and complexes of “Moncadita”, a diminutive of his surname attributed to his short stature.
In volume three of the compilation work “Memoirs of the Sandinista Struggle,” published in 2015 by guerrilla commander Mónica Baltodano (currently an opponent and in exile), the head of the “Rufo Marín” combat unit during the guerrilla, Glauco Robelo—now a retired brigadier general and known as one of the paramilitary leaders who led the 2018 massacres—recalls an anecdote from 1984, which holds Moncada responsible for the escape of Róger Miranda Bengoechea, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) infiltrator, who is blamed for the deaths of several members of Nicaraguan intelligence.
Robelo says that Moncada, as second in command of counterintelligence, was sent by him to find General Joaquín Cuadra, to inform him that there was a “very serious problem,” that they had detected Miranda’s betrayal and were going to arrest him. On the way, Moncada ran into the “traitor” and told him: “Don’t fuck with me, ‘El Chele’ (he was referring to Glauco) is involved in some serious shit!”
Since Miranda had already seen Robelo watching him, he immediately understood that they were about to arrest him and he fled to the United States, taking important military secrets with him, including the identity and location in several Central American countries and Mexico of Nicaraguan intelligence agents who were later murdered, all due to Denis Moncada’s “carelessness.”
Self-conscious and personalityless
It is well known that in Nicaragua, the one who controls foreign policy as she pleases is Murillo. Moncada did not even write the statements of the Foreign Ministry, she only read them, loaded with offensive epithets that are typical of the deputy director’s vocabulary.
Lack of attention and personality is one of the characteristics that define the former foreign minister’s character. A psychologist who spoke to this newspaper some time ago to build a profile of Moncada explains that the Sandinista official strives to “appear to have confidence in himself.”
“He uses pseudoscientific phrases and quotes that make him seem to have mastered the subject he is talking about, when in reality he does not. He is just a repeater. Outside his comfort zone he is incapable of defending his cause and would surely flee the scene, as we have already seen,” says the specialist.
The psychologist also warns that Moncada “does not have the ability to connect his thoughts, he finds it difficult to jump from one topic to another fluently. He repeats the same learned script and if he is asked questions to question the management of the regime to which he belongs, he stumbles nervously,” says the psychologist.
The specialist adds that the former foreign minister practices the “underhanded bragging” typical of a “self-conscious personality” who needs to stand out and clings to the positive evaluation of his followers in order to appear to be a good, modest, patient, stoic official.
Related news: Foreign Minister Denis Moncada: Neglect, complexes and undeserved promotions
The psychologist argues that “for a personality with these traits, plus his military training, it is easier to obey orders than to have his own opinion.”
The expert’s thesis is confirmed by the well-known docility of the former foreign minister, who always showed himself completely submissive to the dictatorial couple, and even to the dictators’ son, Laureano “El Chigüin” Ortega, who has replaced him in functions abroad.
Now, demoted to the position of “presidential advisor”, Moncadita will be less noticeable, because if as foreign minister he was imperceptible except to read the notes from the foreign ministry that his boss Murillo wrote for him, as an advisor, he will have disappeared.
