He attended the Escuela Nacional de Música in Managua as a child, and played trumpet in bands in the city,[1][2] composing several famous waltzes.
He fell ill with leprosy when he was twenty-one years old, but was not sent to the nation's leper colony after writing three items of music that he dedicated to José Santos Zelaya, the President of Nicaragua.
Regardless, his entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians described Mena as "the pre-eminent Nicaraguan composer of his time".
He died twelve years after contracting leprosy, near the Chiquito River in León, on 22 September 1907.
[2] In 2008 Mena was described in Culture and Customs of Nicaragua as one of the "four most important academic composers in the history of music in Nicaragua", in addition to Alejandro Vega Matus, Carlos Alberto Ramirez, and Luis Abraham Delgadillo.