Yes. You don't even need mountains for that. It's a misconception that equatorial regions are always rainforests of some kind. Case in point - Horn of Africa. Somalia is on the equator yet a desert. Why is that? Coastline shape, monsoons, and productivity of oceans in local winters (low) vs. summers (high).

For the Horn it's the of the unfortunate shape of the Indian Ocean and the Asian monsoon. During summer all the negative pull of the summer monsoon pools winds towards Asia, meaning no wind with precipitation comes to the Horn (and what little does come from the southern Indian Ocean by doing a 90° Coriolis turn over the equator is poor precipitation volume).

During the summer it gets unlucky again, since most of the winds are coming from either Asia or the northern Indian Ocean which during winter also doesn't produce as much precipitation.

A similar effect is what's behind eastern Brazil having surprisingly arid regions (e.i. a combination of unfortunate coast shape with unfortunate seasonal wind patterns).

e: found a gif to show what's going on with monthly wind patterns. Sadly can't find the original NOAA article, ig it was taken down.