Former guerrilla who turned youtuber, ironically shares jail with the opponents he persecuted when Daniel Ortega gave him the order to dismantle the barricades they kept in check his regime in 2018
By
Fabián Medina Sánchezfrom Managua, Nicaragua
Marlon Sáenz, alias “El Chino Enoc”, went from being an admirer of Daniel Ortega to being imprisoned in the jail that the Nicaraguan dictator has destined for political prisoners. (Courtesy photo)
Ex-guerrilla fighter. Historic Sandinista. Lawyer. Pensioner. Youtuber. Paramilitary. Political prisoner. Marlon Sáenz Cruz, alias “El Chino Enoc”, is a well-known character in Nicaragua. Last April, he acknowledged in an interview with the newspaper La Prensa that He was one of the thousands of men armed by the Daniel Ortega regime to dismantle the barricades erected in the citizen protests that demanded the resignation of the dictator in 2018.
Today, since May 18, he remains in a punishment cell in the prison known as El Chipote, along with some 40 opposition leaders and critics of the regime whom he persecuted years ago as enemies.
El Chino Enoch was accused by the Prosecutor of “illegal transportation of narcotics, psychotropics and other controlled substances; illegal carrying or possession of firearms or ammunition and manufacturing, trafficking, possession and use of restricted weapons, explosive substances or devices”.
El Chino Enoch with Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, son of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. (Photo courtesy)
The arrest of alias El Chino Enoc occurred on the morning of May 18 , after months of siege and a month of police siege of the house of the. “This is keeping me house for jail”, he complained through his daily videos broadcast on social networks.
Days before, on April 7 of this year, he denounced what he considered a plan to assassinate him. “It’s urgent, it’s urgent. My life is in danger! They have just given signs that the threats they have been making against my physical integrity for a long time are not lies. They have just given a sign that it is not false that they intend to attempt against my life,” he denounced.
According to Sáenz, a man visited him at his home in the northern city of Condega, to propose a plan to overthrow Daniel Ortega. It was a setup, he said, and as he investigated through his intelligence sources, the man was a hit man with the mission of assassinating him, his name is Roberto Calderón, he is of Honduran nationality, they nickname him “El Chote”, he has ties to organized crime and acts as a police intelligence agent in Nicaragua and Honduras .
He held Rosario Murillo, wife of Daniel Ortega and second in command in the Nicaraguan dictatorship, responsible for the plan to assassinate him.“Supposedly they are going to kill me because I denounced the man and they are going to come out with the story that he went to Honduras. But I assure you that if that happens, the story of Rosario (Murillo) ended there, because they will realize that she is a murderer, if that happens, Rosario is a murderer. And some police chiefs. If that happens, the Police will be involved by Rosario”, accused Sáenz.
Video in which Chino Enoc claims his participation in the paramilitary groups that repressed the protests but also admits that “Daniel Ortega is not in good health”; and he criticizes Rosario Murillo. (courtesy Domingo magazine, La Prensa, Nicaragua)
El Chino Enoch, declares himself an admirer of Che Guevara and Daniel Ortega. He began to fall out of favor when his criticism was directed at Rosario Murillo, whom he accuses of managing Ortega and demoralizing the official Sandinista Front party to which he belongs.
He also accuses Murillo of excluding the Sandinista old guard,to strengthen his personal project of power with young and manageable people that he calls “el chayotal”, alluding to the hypocoristic “Chayo” with which Rosario is called in Nicaragua. “Rosario brings out those who can actually confront the gringos. For me, she has personal aspirations. That’s right”, he affirms in the interview with La Prensa.
Marlon Gerardo Cruz Sáenz, 62 years old, is a character anchored in the 70s. He generally wears a Che Guevara-style beret, sometimes he wears a military uniform, he always wears a red and black scarf, like the Sandinista flag, around his neck, and he is still called by the alias he used in hiding more than 40 years ago. .
Marlon Saénz (on the right) joined the Sandinista guerrilla that was fighting against the dictator Anastasio Somoza at the age of 16. (Courtesy photo)
He joined the Sandinista guerrilla when he was 16 years old, in 1976, and in the 1980s he served the revolution in State Security, the espionage and political control body of the regime, led by Sandinista commanders Lenin Cerna and Tomás Borge with an iron hand.
After the Sandinista Front lost power in 1990, like many of his comrades-in-arms, he studied law and became a lawyer. Suffering from illnesses, he lived with his family in Condega, a small city 180 kilometers north of Managua.
But Chino Enoch did not become popular for his adventures as a guerrilla nor for his performance in State Security, but for his rudimentary videos that he broadcast almost daily with a twangy voice through social networks. Sáenz’s videos harshly criticized the leadership of the Sandinista regime and party, particularly the performance of Rosario Murillo. He was the only critical voice within the Sandinista Front, a party in which it is considered taboo to criticize the leaders.
“I don’t know confused, I’m not an opponent, I’m a Sandinista”, he clarified.
Marlos Saénz belongs to the Sandinista old guard, who officially call themselves “Sandinistas historical”. “Historical Sandinism refers to all those Sandinistas who come from the guerrilla against Somoza or who were in the war in the 1980s, both in the Army and in the Ministry of the Interior, as well as in political structures and in the State or government. , many of them with military or honorary degrees. Most of them have been by Daniel Ortega’s side,” explained to Infobae the retired major of the Nicaraguan Army, Roberto Samcam.
Marlon Sáenz, alias El Chino Enoc, (first on the left), while escorting Daniel Ortega in his 1996 electoral campaign. (Courtesy photo)
This old guard was relegated by Rosario Murillo after the return of Daniel Ortega to power in 2007. However, when the 2018 protests exceeded the response capacity of the Police and the Sandinista shock groups, Ortega called these former guerrillas, many of them elderly, but with military experience, to join the paramilitary army that with weapons of war and support from the Police carried out the so-called “Cleaning Operation” to dismantle the barricades that had almost paralyzed the country.
“We don’t let ourselves be used. We were aware. We spent almost three months telling him, Commander, give us the order and we’ll descachimbamos (disrupt). We asked them ourselves, they didn’t use us,” El Chino Enoc confessed in an interview with the newspaper La Prensa.
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), 355 people were murdered during these days of protest and repression, most of them during the execution of Operation Cleanup.
“Not all of them carried weapons,” Sáenz explained. “And those who did not all carried weapons of war. One famous photo, where I have a gun, that’s a 16 shotgun. Most people carried shotguns. There were 40 percent young people along with the old. There were cripples, paunchies, who couldn’t even run, the only thing with experience.”
The Sandinista old guard began to be relegated again this year. A memorandum signed on March 28 of this year by Leopoldo Rivas Alfaro, national coordinator of attention to “historical Sandinism”, orders the “deactivation” of the structures of the old guard.
With a Che Guevara-style beret, occasionally military clothing, and a red and black scarf around his neck, El Chino Enoc is a character anchored in the 1970s. (Courtesy photo)
“Historical Sandinismo claimed the place they had in the 1980s: a place of leadership, positions in the government, control, management of resources, but Rosario did not contemplate them, because she had in her plans the creation of a youth phalanx that could perfectly control her where there were no old people”, says retired Major Roberto Samcam.
El Chino Enoch reacted dissatisfied with the memorandum and ignored the order. “Not even Daniel Ortega can deactivate historic Sandinismo,” he said.
In this way he came to be besieged and persecuted like the very opponents he, ironically, persecuted. Right now he is in a punishment cell, as it was known unofficially, in the El Chipote prison, where the Ortega regime concentrates most of the opposition leaders it has sentenced as political prisoners.< /p>