Three Salvadoran civil defensemen stand near their fortified position in a village on the outskirts of San Vicente, El Salvador, March 1, 1982. Civil defense patrols were utilized by the authoritarian state regime as a form of paramilitary control, specifically over the rural sectors of society. It is reported that the civil defense patrols along with the Salvadoran National Guard were complicit in indiscriminate attacks on peasant cooperatives and villages suspected of subversive sympathies.