Early Years
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 rich 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 and was 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.
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