CISPES: Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

In the mid-1970s, two Purdue University professors, one in political science and the other in sociology, worked together to establish an Indiana chapter of CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). At the time, El Salvador was in the midst of an internal civil war between the government headed by Jose Napolean Duarte, and the opposition forces under the banner of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front). The government and military were accused of using "death squads" to intimidate many residents of rural areas from supporting rebel forces. The goal of the Indiana CISPES chapter was to inform community organizations throughout the state of events in El Salvador, and how the U.S. support for Duarte and the military was working against the interests of most Salvadorans. A second goal was to provide support for social and political groups from El Salvador that were traveling in the Midwest to meet with groups in the U.S. CISPES also undertook special projects like bringing a post-graduate student from El Salvador's national university to Purdue to study how field methods could be applied to reach the general pubic in hostile environments like the one existing in El Salvador.

On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were killed at the campus of Universidad Centro-America in El Salvador. The killings made many think of the killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated while saying mass in March of 1980,when there was a major crackdown by the Death Squads against anyone with sympathies for the FMLN. The first thoughts of the CISPES group was that our former student at Universidad Centro-America was fortunate not to be involved in the attack, but for how long would she be safe? We began efforts to get the student out of El Salvador and into the United States. It was not easy, but we received specific instructions of how to do so. Robert and Carolyn set up a bank account in the student's name at a specific bank in Southern California with deposits in the amount of $15,000. In 2018 dollars, that would be $31,000. All went well, and our former Salvadoran student is now living a full life in the U.S.