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