As General Secretary of the PCES, Hándal embraced elections and rejected armed struggle to conquer political power in El Salvador.

As a guerrilla leader in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the group that brought five opposition forces together to found the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) movement.

Following the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, the FMLN converted itself from a guerrilla army into a political party, and Hándal served as its general coordinator.

He fainted at Comalapa Airport upon his return from Bolivia where he had attended the inauguration ceremony of President Evo Morales; he was flown by helicopter to a San Salvador hospital but doctors were unable to revive him.In a ceremony held at the Universidad de El Salvador on January 16, 2004, he received the honorary title of Professor of Political Science from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

[citation needed] The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, was one of the Latin American leaders who most grieved over the death of Hándal, who considered him a great revolutionary.