Story of a Nicaraguan revolutionary fighter

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Fire From the Mountain: the Making of a Sandinista, By Omar Cabezas. Translated by Kathleen Weaver. Crown Publishers, 1985. 233 pp. $13.95.

No revolution has had as literary a leadership as the Nicaraguan revolution. The Russians had journalists and historians such as Trotsky, Lunacharsky and Preobrazhensky, and from Cuba came a cinematic barrage (not from the combatants themselves). But Nicaragua is blessed with an activist leadership of genuine literary ability.

The Sandinistas have the outstanding poet Ernesto Cardenal and the novelist Sergio Ramirez. Nicaragua's most popular literary form, however, has been the testimonio, based on biographical accounts and interviews.

"Fire From the Mountain, is an autobiography originally published in Spanish under the title, "La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estapa verde."

It is now available in English in a smooth translation by Kathleen Weaver.

The volume boasts an insightful introduction by Mexican author and diplomat Carlos Fuentes and a succinct historical afterword by the French radical historian Henri Weber.

Omar Cabezas is the revolutionary as picaro (rogue). His book is a frontal attack on the stereotyped romanticism of guerrilla war. It is a story less of fearlessness and battle than a realistic account of blisters, exhaustion, doubt, and most of all loneliness. It is a testimony to the quiet, patient courage of a man and a people.

Cabezas has many literary strengths, but two stand out. The language is blunt yet vivid, and the author is a master of the walk-on character. These he portrays with arresting detail—a bar owner, an elderly Sandinista couple, the champion pool player of Leon, and the youthful Juan Jose Quezada, who Nicaragua (continued from pa mined the Nicaraguan ports? bombed Sandino airport? Who lished the CIA crime manual? So are the terrorists?"

Will the U.S. send troops?

The war waged by U.S.-backed contras has cost the lives of 12,000 Nicaraguans in the past four years, according to Ortega. Forty percent of the state budget is currently spent on the defense effort and inflation has risen to a 125 percent yearly rate. But despite the hardships the war imposes upon the Nicaraguan workers and peasants, support for the revolution remains high.

"Sooner or later the United States will have to realize that they cannot destroy the Nicaraguan revolution with mercenary forces" Ortega pointed out in a July 17 interview with the New York Times. "The only thing that would be left would be to use American troops."

The Foley Amendment, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 27, lays out certain conditions under which the president can order an invasion. These include the obtaining by Nicaragua of high-performance Soviet planes and the kidnapping or "terrorizing" of U.S. citizens.

The Philadelphia Inquirer commented at the time, "In a single feeble stroke, the House has gone on record declaring itself against blitzing Managua and, at the same time, has handed the president a list of conditions so broad that should he need or desire a pretense, he has it in writing."

But the U.S. government knows that the costs of an invasion would be high. Nicaragua announced last month that it is distributing 200,000 rifles to the civilian militia to prepare for direct U.S. intervention.

Furthermore, "the war would not be limited to Nicaragua, Ortega said in his July 17 Times interview. "The revolutionary strategy would not be to get the U.S. out of Nicaragua but to make rev14 SOCIALIST ge l) Who pubwho olution all over Central America."

The "Vietnam syndrome"

The Reagan administration might be willing to risk an immediate invasion if only military considerations were at stake. But the political costs must also be confronted. The administration must attempt to neutralize antiwar sentiment in the United States itself.

This is precisely the goal of Reagan's campaign against "terrorism."

Reagan is using the same technique that President Johnson utilized most FROM THEE recruits him to the Frente and later becomes a Sandinista martyr.

This account covers the years 1968-1975, taking Cabezas from his political formation as a campus activist in the northern city of Leon, through to his integration into a guerrilla unit. Eventually he returns to Leon, and then moves to a small town as a veteran military instructor. This is Cabezas' coming of age under the most difficult conditions, which were shared by his entire generation.

Cabezas' initiation into the student movement was spurred by his hatred of the National Guard, and his own humble background. The example of Che Guevarra, recently killed in Bolivia, and the massacre of an FSLN guerilla unit at Pancasan in 1967 were fresh in his mind.

In 1968, when Cabezas joined the Frente, the FSLN was just a handful of people. In Leon, a administration's Rambo-like bluster.

They are painfully aware that the new antiwar movement that has taken shape in recent years is applying pressure on governments in Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific, as well as the United States. "Frankly, all the talk about invading Nicaragua is counterproductive", Gen.

Wallace Nutting, the commander of U.S. Army and Air Force combat forces in the United States, told the New York Times on June 25. "If we invade Nicaragua, not only will we jeopardize grew rapidly.

Under the leadership of Cabezas and his comrades this growth culminated in a victory in the student elections. In an impressive show of strength, the students linked up with Subtiavan Indians in demonstrations against the regime.

Loneliness and doubt

The larger test came in the mountains, "la montana" of the Spanish title. The urban youth was painfully transformed into "the new man" described by Che Guevara. He overcomes the initial shock of realizing the weakness and isolation of the guerrilla forces and survives the immediate instinct to quit.

It's been claimed jokingly that revolutions are won by youths too naive to realize that they can't possibly win. Cabezas' account dramatizes the wisdom of that assertion. In the mountains there is hunger, cold, rain, wearying forced marches, and worst of all—loneliness, fear, and doubt.

When Cabezas' guerrilla teacher is killed in an ambush, the effect is devastating. How will the student fare against the murderous National Guard, when his teacher was so easily defeated? But Cabezas and his comrades develop physical and mental toughness and the iron resolve to carry through to the end.

Later, as a veteran instructor at a guerrilla camp, Cabezas and his group are finally pinned down. The conclusion reads like a tense adventure novel as the vastly outgunned Sandinistas seek to escape a Somocista ring of steel.

The tale concludes in an encounter with an old man who served with Sandino. The youth has found his roots: " ...through him, I had recovered my own history, the tradition, the essence of Nicaragua. I had found my genesis, my antecedents; I felt myself a continuation, concrete and uninterrupted...I had never seen, materially, my umbilical cord—and suddenly it was there."

This is a funny book, and a warm book. Most touching of all are those characters, tenderly recalled, who perished in the struggle and whose names now adorn the streets, buildings, and mythology of Nicaragua.

If ever we have had a "humanizing" portrait of a people with whom the United States is virtually at war, this is it. One wants only a sequel, and the author is reportedly at work on one.

nomic, and political moves accompanied by attempts at negotiation for the sake of appearances. "Power-sharing" with the contras?

Reagan's national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, vowed on July 18 that the United States would continue to provide aid to the contra troops until Nicaragua is forced to establish "a Western-style democracy."

The terms of "democracy" acceptable to the United States were spelled out under the so-called Reagan Plan, which the administration announced last spring. A settlement would include a cease-fire, the dissolution of the

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