Member Of ORDEN Captured By FPL Guerrillas In Chalatenango Department, El Salvador
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A captured member, second right, of the paramilitary militia Organización Democrática Nacionalista, Democratic Nationalist Organization, ORDEN, stands with his family behind a table of weapons following the takeover of their village by leftist guerrillas from the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, FPL, in San Antonio de la Cruz, El Salvador, February 20, 1981. ORDEN was established in the late 1960s with support from the United States Army Special Forces by General José Alberto Medrano, known as the father of Salvadoran counterinsurgency. ORDEN, along with the Agencia Nacional de Seguridad Salvadoreña, National Security Agency of El Salvador, ANSESAL, widely considered to be the origin of the death squads, were employed by the military to infiltrate and terrorize rural populations considered subversive to the regime. Although ORDEN was nominally disbanded in 1979, many of its members were folded into civil defense units who continued to use extrajudicial violence and torture to repress the civilian population throughout the armed conflict.
