Omar Cabezas

Who is Omar Cabezas?

Omar Cabezas Lacayo is a Nicaraguan author, revolutionary and politician. He was a commander in the guerrilla war against Somoza, and prominent Sandinista party member. He is perhaps most famous outside of Nicaragua for his book entitled Fire From the Mountain, which is a personal account of his days as a guerrilla fighting the Somoza dynasty.

This personal testimony can be read as a bildungsroman, or novela de formación in Spanish. In it Cabezas learns about life, about social injustice, about women, and about the difficulty of overthrowing a dictatorship. He struggles against nature; an infection he suffers from being on the mountain, puts his life in jeopardy. He overcomes numerous obstacles in his quest to bring down the brutal US-supported thirty year Somoza dynasty in an environment defined by terror and hope. Cabezas' story is about an idealist man in a time when it meant something to be heroic. It is also known for being the first major work in the Nicaraguan vernacular, rather than formal Spanish.