Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, based in Washington, D.C., is a national activist organization with chapters in various cities in the United States. CISPES supports the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the progressive social movement in El Salvador.

CISPES was founded in 1980 in opposition to the U.S. aid (funding and political support) to the Salvadoran military and government during the Salvadoran civil war. CISPES opposed the politics and the actions of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and its leader Roberto D'Aubuisson during the Salvadoran Civil War, and continues to oppose the policies that ARENA implements.

Since the end of El Salvador's civil war in 1992, CISPES has worked with the FMLN and with Salvadoran popular movement organizations (unions, women's groups, peasants groups, etc.) in opposition to economic policies of free trade and privatization such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CISPES organizes delegations to visit with El Salvador's left wing activists as well as organizing delegations to monitor Salvadoran elections for potential fraud or political manipulation.

Responsible for the distribution and dissemination of a Soviet forged State Department paper Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America CISPES was a target of two FBI investigations during the 1980.

From August to December 1981 the FBI conducted a 3-month inquiry (something less than an investigation) into whether CISPES was merely a front organization for the Salvadoran rebel groups, thereby placing the organization in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

The organization that had grown to over 300 regional chapters in one year, came under DOJ and FBI scrutiny based on the alleged travel diary of Farid Handal, brother of Salvadoran Communist Party leader Schafik Hándal, that supposedly had been seized by the Salvadoran National Guard during raids on rebel safehouses and handed over the CIA. A story about the diary made its way into a John Birch Society publication Review of the News and a Republican House of Representative staffer passed a copy on to the FBI.[14]The diary was said to outline Farid's visit to the US and his meetings with Sandy Pollack, representing both the U.S. Peace Council (USPC, the national chapter of the then Soviet directed World Peace Council) and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and with others, with the expressed and sole purpose of creating a solidarity network in the US for the Salvadoran rebels.[15]

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