Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (in Spanish: Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) (initials: FMLN) was a guerilla movement which emerged in El Salvador in 1980. After the ceasefire established by the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords, it became a legitimate political party. Its candidate for the forthcoming presidential election in 2004 is Jorge Handal Schafik.

The FMLN was formed, allegedly with Cuban backing, as guerrilla umbrella organization for five leftist groups active in El Salvador in the 1970s: Central American Workers' Revolutionary Party (PRTC), People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), Farabundo Marti Popular Liberation Forces (FPL), Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN), and the Communist Party of El Salvador's Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL).

The organization was named for the rebel leader Farabundo Marti, who led workers and campesinos in an uprising to transform Salvadoran society after the devastation caused by the eruption of the volcano Izalco in 1932. It was ruthlessly supressed, with some 30,000 killed.

See further

• History of El Salvador