The Revolutionary Sandinistas in Nicaragua

At the same time, Cabezas makes absorb that his entrance into the Sandinistas was hardly taken on a whim. He tells us he despised the National Guard, non because of political ideals, unless because they beat up brawling drunks who he liked to look out fight. The man who recruited him was admired by Cabezas not particularly because of totally wonderful and uplifting ideas of justice, but because "He was an expert in karate and judo, a killer in karate. You better believe I admired his physical strength, his toughness" (p. 7).

There are, nevertheless, more thoughtful reasons which led the designer to join the Sandinistas: "On the one hand, I was attracted by all this because it was against the dictatorship, against Somoza, against the Guard; on the other hand, it was a question of class. I was very conscious of being from a working-class family, so when they talked at the university about injustice, about poverty, I thought of my own barrio, which was a poor barrio" (p. 8).

There is a sense of inevitability which the author embeds in his narrative, as if he were destined to join the Sandinistas (p. 9). He is afraid, however, but, as we discover, it is not ultimately the fear which causes him the most suffering, but rather the loneliness. The message here, as in any coming-of-age tale, is that one's expectations, whether for the better or the worse, are ever so different than the reality.

Cabezas never loses his sense of humor, his sense of humanity, in telling

us his story, but it is when he square portrays the painful loneliness of his life in the Sandinistas that we most intelligibly understand what the guerrillas gave up in their very down-to-earth oppose for their ideals: " . . . The hardest thing isn't the nightmare of the trail, or the horrible things about the mountains; it's not the torture or lack of food or having the resistance always on your track; it's not going almost filthy and stinking, or being constantly wet. It's the loneliness. Nothing is as rough as the loneliness" (p. 83).

The author's style is crisp and lavish of detail and humor and pain, but finally it is his profound truthfulness in presenting the reality of the revolutionary experience --- with all its disillusionment, all its grit --- which draws the reader more and more deeply into his narrative.

We tin hardly doubt the sincerity of Cabezas' more ideological conclusions, wherein he brings together the impulses of history and the people of Nicaragua: " . . . This was the history of the Nicaraguan people. They had a Sandinista history, a history of rebellion against exploitation, against North American domination. They understand rebellion in a primitive, gut-level way; their rebellion was historical and came out of their fight against the Yankee occupation . . . Poor, barefoot people, but with an extraordinary sense of issue dignity, with a consciousness of national sovereignty. That, in essence, was the reality" (p. 220).

The reader will find it super difficult to accept the view of the United States Government that the Sandinistas were a group of Moscow-inspired cutthroats after having read this open-hearted book. At every rung, the author turns his back on the opportunity to paint the Sandinistas as whatsoever sort of aggressive saints, choosing instead at every turn to show their humanity: "The other family was made up of the wife, the husband, who was an aging revolutionary, an old Sandinista from the early days, and two or
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