's career in his discovery of Indian subcultures in his early Sandinista days. He cites the Indian origins of the minority Subtiavans in Nicaragua and the Sandinista recruitment policy of trying "to transpose the old ancestral struggles of Adiac, their ancient chief" to the concept of class struggle. "And to remind them of how they'd been dispossessed, humiliated. How both Liberals and Conservatives had bullied them" (Cabezas, 1985, p. 40). Affiliating with Indian minorities--or more exactly recruiting them to the cause--was decisive because it encouraged a collective class consciousness that could be molded to revolutionary unity. That provided Cabezas himself with a sense of belonging to an increasingly empowered group at the time he went into the mountains as a guerrilla.
Cabezas mentions a sense of isolation inasmuch as guerrillas had to work hard to develop what he calls organic, ideological, and political ties to the people; indeed, there was a language barrier with some Indians in the countryside. But the exhilaration as such ties were built appears to
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