Carlos Fonseca Amador (23 June 1936 – 8 November 1976) was a Nicaraguan teacher, librarian and revolutionary who founded the

Sandinista National Liberation Front The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto ...

(FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of the

Zelaya Department Zelaya is a former department in Nicaragua. The department was located along the Mosquito Coast bordering the Caribbean Sea and was named after former President of Nicaragua José Santos Zelaya, who conquered the region for Nicaragua from t ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the coun ...

, three years before the FSLN took power.

Early years

Fonseca was born in a "corner house" his aunt (Isaura) acquired at the south-end of

Matagalpa Matagalpa () is a city in Nicaragua which is the capital of the department of Matagalpa. The city has a population of 111,258 (2021 estimate),Unión Nacional de Acción Popular (UNAP, National Union of Popular Action). Fonseca became increasingly interested in

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

and joined the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense (PSN, Nicaraguan Socialist Party). He left the UNAP in 1953 or 1954, complaining they were too "bourgeoisified" on social issues, and not active enough against the

Somoza The Somoza family ( es, Familia Somoza) is a former political family that ruled Nicaragua for forty-three years from 1936 to 1979. Their family dictatorship was founded by Anastasio Somoza García and was continued by his two sons Luis Somoza D ...

government. In 1954, he and several school friends founded and began to publish a cultural journal called ''Segovia''.

Early political activity

In 1957, Fonseca traveled to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

as a PSN delegate to the

6th World Festival of Youth and Students The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students was held from 28 July to 5 August 1957 in Moscow, capital city of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The festival attracted 34,000 people from 130 countries. This became possible after the po ...

organized by the

World Federation of Democratic Youth The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organization, and has historically characterized itself as left-wing and anti-imperialist. WFDY was founded in London in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, ...

. Fonseca later wrote a book chronicling his visit to the USSR entitled ''Un Nicaragüense en Moscú'' ("A Nicaraguan in Moscow"). The book featured uncritical praise of the accomplishments of the Soviet government, including its "free press, complete freedom of religion and the efficiency of its worker-run industries."

Taking up arms

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 20 ...

and the

26th of July Movement The 26th of July Movement ( es, Movimiento 26 de Julio; M-26-7) was a Cuban vanguard revolutionary organization and later a political party led by Fidel Castro. The movement's name commemorates its 26 July 1953 attack on the army barracks on San ...

took power in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...

on January 1, 1959. The

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...

was a major event all over

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

and sparked both great concern and a sense of possibility in Nicaragua. The Cuban Revolution was a central event in Fonseca's political evolution as it convinced him that a revolution was possible and that organisation was necessary. Just as the Cuban revolution was organized outside the framework of the Cuban Communist Party, he came to believe that a Nicaraguan revolutionary movement could be created outside of the PSN and other pre-existing groups. The rebel victory in Cuba was mirrored by an increase in armed anti-Somoza actions in Nicaragua. Fonseca took part in one such uprising in 1959. In February of that year, Fonseca, as well as many other more prominent Nicaraguan radicals, traveled to Cuba. In mid-1959, Fonseca joined a Nicaraguan guerrilla brigade which had a training camp in southern

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

. On June 24, 1959, the brigade was ambushed by Honduran and Nicaraguan troops in Honduras, ending in the death of several rebels and the wounding and capturing of many others, including Fonseca. The incident marked the end of Fonseca's relationship with the PSN. Whereas Fonseca's revolutionary zeal increased in the aftermath of the ambush, the PSN became convinced that a revolution in Nicaragua was impossible. Labelling Fonseca and other Nicaraguans who fought in the brigade as too "guerrilla-ist," the PSN expelled Fonseca and the others. Fonseca managed to leave the military hospital in Honduras where he was taken after the June 24th ambush and went to Cuba. There, he began to seriously study

Augusto César Sandino Augusto C. Sandino (; May 18, 1895 February 21, 1934), full name Augusto Nicolás Calderón de Sandino y José de María Sandino, was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion between 1927 and 1933 against the United States occupat ...

. Fonseca also began to host political meetings in a small apartment in the Miramar section of Havana. The meetings were frequented by people who would later become part of the FSLN.

Sandinista

Between 1959 and 1963, Fonseca and those who would become the earliest members of the FSLN began to organise in the hopes of forming a true revolutionary organization. Having formed several short-lived groups, the FSLN came to be in 1963. Originally, Fonseca hoped to duplicate the Cuban revolution in Nicaragua, drawing up battle plans based on the Cuban experience. In mid-1963, a guerrilla cadre entered the Rios Coco y Bocay area of Nicaragua. Poorly prepared and having done little advance work in the area, several guerrillas were killed by the Guardia Nacional, while others were able to escape across the Honduran border. In June 1964, Fonseca and Víctor Tirado were arrested in Managua. The two (along with four others) were accused of plotting to assassinate

Anastasio Somoza Debayle Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza Debayle (; 5 December 1925 – 17 September 1980) was the President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was ''de facto'' ruler of t ...

. Rather than present a defense during his trial, Fonseca leveled charges against Somoza which were later detailed in his manuscript, ''From Prison, I Accuse the Dictatorship''. Between 1964 and 1966, the FSLN carried out educational work and

community organizing Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. Unlike those who promote more-consensual community bu ...

, creating indoctrination classes and campaigning to bring resources to working-class neighborhoods in Managua. While Fonseca continued to hold the top leadership position in the FSLN, he was out of the country for much of the mid-1960s, having fled to Mexico and then Costa Rica. By mid-1966, plans for a second FSLN guerrilla operation in the Pancasan region (near Matagalpa) were underway. The operation began in May 1967 with about forty guerrillas. This time, the guerrillas were better trained and armed and had women among their ranks. Fonseca, along with a few other FSLN leaders were committed to the inclusion of women, but some of the other fighters were not comfortable fighting alongside women. Like the earlier guerrilla incursion, the Pancasan operation ended with many of the FSLN guerrillas being killed by the Guardia Nacional. However, Fonseca, and the others who survived, considered the operation a political victory "because it showed the whole country that the FSLN still existed".. The presence of the FSLN in the mountains led to a steady persecution of their leaders by the National Guard which forced Fonseca to make use of unusual tactics by hiding in the homes of people not associated with the FSLN, most notably his stay, for a week in Novembre of 1967 at the Managua home of Dame Angelica Balladares de Arguello , who had been the former President of the Femenist League, ¨Woman of the Américas¨ in 1959, and since 1926, known as "The First Lady of Nicaraguan Liberalism". In his book ''The World Was Going Our Way'', Vasily Mitrokhin relates how, as part of the KGB's

Aleksandr Shelepin Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin (; 18 August 1918 – 24 October 1994) was a Soviet politician and security and intelligence officer. A long-time member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he served as First Depu ...

's strategy of using national liberation movements to advance the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the Third World, Shelepin organized funding and training in Moscow for twelve individuals handpicked by Fonseca, and the twelve were the core of the new Sandinista organization. However, Russia historian J. Arch Getty, writing in the ''American Historical Review'', raised questions about the trustworthiness and verifiability of Mitrokhin's material about the Soviet Union, doubting whether this "self-described loner with increasingly anti-Soviet views" would have had the opportunity to "transcribe thousands of documents, smuggle them out of KGB premises", etc. Former Indian counter-terrorism chief

Bahukutumbi Raman Bahukutumbi Raman (14 August 1936 – 16 June 2013), also referred to as B. Raman, was an Additional Secretary of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India and head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research and Analysis Win ...

also questions both the validity of the material and the conclusions drawn from them.Bahukutumbi Raman
The Mitrokhin mystery
Rediff.com, September 26, 2005.

Popular culture

In the mid 1980s, musician

Paul Kantner Paul Lorin Kantner (March 17, 1941 – January 28, 2016) was an American rock musician. He is best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and vocalist of Jefferson Airplane, a leading psychedelic rock band of the counterculture era. He cont ...

traveled to Nicaragua out of concern for the Sandinista situation. While in the country, he was given a song called "Comandante Carlos Fonseca", written by composer

Carlos Mejía Godoy Carlos Mejía Godoy (born June 27, 1943) is a Nicaraguan musician (accordion), composer and singer. He was born in Somoto, Madriz. Son of Carlos Mejía Fajardo and María Elsa Godoy, his brother Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, three years younger tha ...

and revolutionary

Tomás Borge Tomás Borge Martínez (13 August 1930 – 30 April 2012), often spelled as Thomas Borge in United States newspapers) was a cofounder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and was Interior Minister of Nicaragua during one of th ...

. After reforming

Jefferson Starship Jefferson Starship is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1974 by a group of musicians including former members of Jefferson Airplane. Between 1974 and 1984, they released eight gold or platinum-selling studio albu ...

in the 1990s, he added the song to his repertoire, eventually recording the song for the 2008 album '' Jefferson's Tree of Liberty''.

Notes

References

*Zimmermann, Matilde. ''Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution.'' Duke University Press (2000). *Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. ''The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World''. Basic Books (2005) *Borge, Tomás. ''The Patient Impatience'' Curbstone Press (1992).

External links

Carlos Fonseca Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fonseca, Carlos 1936 births 1976 deaths Members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front Nicaraguan communists Nicaraguan revolutionaries Nicaraguan socialists People from Matagalpa Department People of the Nicaraguan Revolution National Heroines and Heroes of Nicaragua