Omar Cabezas

OMAR CABEZAS joined the Frente Sandinista while a student in the late 1960s. At that time in Nicaragua just a small band organising steadily against the oppression of the country's virtual dictator, Anastazio Somoza, and his National Guard.

The Sandinistas were to come to power in 1979 and Cabezas is now a Government minister. This book is a personal diary-like account of the change in himself from being a student – well versed in history, capable in argument, follower of Augusto Sandino (who led the first peasant based resistance to the USA's military occupation of Nicaragua in 1920s) and admirer of Che Guevara – to moving into the mountains and becoming bona-fide guerrilla.

Cabezas' book concludes four years before the Sandinistas assumed control and Somoza fled to Paraguay (later to be assassinated). It is not formal political doctrine or analysis, but it gives a potent taste of the roots of the present situation.