Cabezas Lacayo, Omar (1950–)

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Cabezas Lacayo, Omar (1950–)

The Nicaraguan Omar Cabezas Lacayo is best known as the author of two testimonial works, La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde (1982; published in English as Fire From the Mountain, 1985) and Canción de amor para los hombres (Love for All Men, 1988) that narrate Cabezas's role in the popular uprising against the government of Anastasio Somoza and epitomize the fluid colloquial prose and oral communicative strategies characteristic of the testimonial genre.

The first work chronicles his own revolutionary coming of age as a university student, whereas the second describes his actions as a Sandinista comandante from 1974 to 1979 and reflects his growing awareness as first-person narrator and protagonist. Because of his themes and the accessibility of his texts to a wide reading public, Cabezas has frequently been read alongside the works of other Central American testimonials that also give voice to broader and traditionally marginalized populations.

Cabezas joined the Student Revolutionary Front (FER) in the late 1960s. After serving with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, Cabezas was named deputy interior minister for the FSLN government during the 1980s. After the Sandinista defeat at the polls in 1990, Cabezas became involved with human rights activities in Nicaragua and Central America, most recently as Nicaragua's autonomous Ombudsman for Human Rights (Procurador para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbas Rhoden, Laura H. "El papel del testimonio después de la victoria: Omar Cabezas y el discurso revolucionario en Nicaragua." Confluencia 14: 2 (1999): 63-75.

Cabezas, Omar. La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde. Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1982.

Cabezas, Omar. Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista. Translated by Kathleen Weaver. New York: Crown Publishers, 1985.

Cabezas, Omar. Canción de amor para los hombres. Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1988.

Cabezas Lacayo, Omar. "Testimonio de mis testimonios (sobre preguntas de Edward Walters Hood)." Hispamérica 22: 64-65 (1993): 111-120.

Delgado Aburto, Leonel. "Proceso cultural y fronteras del testimonio nicaragüense." Istmo, 12 March 2004. Available from http://www.denison.edu/collaborations/istmo/v01n02/articulos/proceso.html.

Hood, Edward Walters. "Form and Content in Cabezas Lacayós Works: Testimonio literario, literatura testimonial." PCCLAS Proceedings 15 (1991): 1-2; (1991–1992): 87-95.

Mantero, José María. "Omar Cabezas, Gioconda Belli y Sergio Ramírez: Autobiografías, sandinismo e identidad nicaragüense."Salina 18 (2004): 235-242.

Mantero, José María. "La mitificación de la revolución sandinista: El caso de Omar Cabezas y La montaña es más que una inmensa estepa verde." Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 30: 2 (2003): 47-57.

McCallister, Rick. "La cuestión de género en La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde." In La literatura centroamericana: Visiones y revisiones, edited by Jorge Román Lagunas. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1994.

Ross, Peter. "Between Fiction and History: Omar Cabezas's La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde." In War and Revolution in Hispanic Literature, edited by Roy Boland and Alun Kenwood. Melbourne, Australia: Voz Hispánica, 1990.

Ward, Thomas. "Omar Cabezas y el testimonio de aprendi-zaje." In La resistencia cultural: La nación en el ensayo de las Américas, edited by Thomas Ward. Lima: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2004.

JosÉ MarÍa Mantero

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture