Herty Lewites
Herty Lewites Rodríguez (December 24, 1939 – July 2, 2006) was a Nicaraguan politician. He was Mayor of Managua and a candidate for president in the 2006 Nicaraguan general election when he died suddenly. Early life and involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution Lewites was born on December 24, 1939 in the San Felipe barrio of Jinotepe, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Poland (a candymaker) and a Catholic Nicaraguan. The two had met when his father visited Nicaragua from New York, fell in love with his mother and settled there. In Nicaragua his father owned the only gas station in town, Texaco, and two friends Lewites met at the gas station became pivotal in forming his commitment to fight the Somoza dictatorship: during the April 1954 rebellion, Lewites, then 15, was shocked by the murders of his friends Pablo Leal and Adolfo Báez Bone by the Somoza National Guard. He joined the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship in 1958 and went into exile in Brazil in 1960 with his father following Lewites’ participation in the military action taking of the Jinotepe and Diriamba headquarters. Later Lewites went to El Salvador, Mexico and Cuba, and in 1969 he joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Rather than fighting, he began directing Solidarity Committees, becoming involved in financial matters and arms smuggling for the revolutionary movement. In 1973 he was imprisoned in the United States for illicit arms trafficking, spending a year and a half in a federal penitentiary at San Pedro, California. Outside of prison, he was highly effective and creative in his efforts, staging photography sessions to mislead the Somocistas about the whereabouts of key Sandinista fighters like Nora Astorga. He also helped form the Group of 12, a group of major Nicaraguan establishment figures who agreed to show public support for the Sandinistas, lending legitimacy to the FSLN. His brother, Israel Lewites, was involved in armed struggle and died in the attack on the Masaya barracks in October 1977. Years in government During the period of Sandinista rule in the 1980s, Lewites was an ally of the powerful Ortega brothers. As Minister of Tourism, he promoted state development projects, such as the Montelimar beach resort in 1986 and the Olof Palme Convention Center in Managua. Lewites was twice married, first to Edda María Lacayo, with whom he had a son and later to Carmen García, who was his secretary at the Ministry of Tourism. He left his first wife and had a daughter with García. After leaving government, he built the "Hertylandia" private amusement park. Lewites was elected to Congress on the FSLN ticket in 1990, the year Daniel Ortega lost the presidency. He aligned himself with Sergio Ramírez's Sandinista Renewal Movement (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista or "MRS") against the faction of Secretary General Ortega in 1994. He ran for mayor of Managua, the capital, in 1996 on his own "Sol" ticket, splitting the Sandinista vote to throw the election to the Liberal candidate. With the support of the FSLN