Carlos Fonseca

Carlos Fonseca Amador
Carlos Fonseca Amador
Born	June 23, 1936 Matagalpa, Matagalpa
Died	November 8, 1976 (1976-11-09) (aged 40) Zinica, Matagalpa
Parent(s)	Fausto Amador Alemán Augustina Fonseca Úbeda

Carlos Fonseca Amador (June 23, 1936 – November 8, 1976) was a Nicaraguan teacher and librarian who founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of Nicaragua, three years before the FSLN took power.

Born in Matagalpa, a town in northwestern Nicaragua, Fonseca was the son of Augustina Fonseca Úbeda, "an unmarried twenty-six-year-old washerwoman from the countryside". His father, Fausto Amador Alemán, a member of the prominent coffee-growing Amador family, did not acknowledge Fonseca until his elementary school years. Fonseca's father was part of a wealthy family, while his mother was a peasant. His father helped him later on to go to school and educate himself, but he always admired his mother more, because of her work ethic and strength. Because of this, Fonseca would repeatedly use her last name first, and was consequently known as Carlos Fonseca Amador.

In 1950, Fonseca entered secondary school and slowly became involved with political groups. In the early 1950s, he attended meetings for a Conservative Party youth group and joined the Unión Nacional de Acción Popular (UNAP, National Union of Popular Action). Fonseca became increasingly interested in Marxism 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 (the poor, the student movement, etc.) and that it "did not take on the Somoza government. In 1954, he and several school friends founded and began to publish a "cultural journal" called Segovia."

Fonseca was arrested by the Guardia Nacional and held for nearly two months. According to Zimmermann, at this point Fonseca remained "committed to nonviolent methods and believed the PSN provided the leadership Nicaragua needed".

In 1957, Fonseca traveled to the Soviet Union as a PSN delegate to the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth. 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". Not listed in the book, he traveled to San Francisco, USA, to stay with his relatives (Albert Amador, Sr. & Maria Amador) and to attend community college.