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 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.