1960s: US Assists Salvadoran Government in Creation of New Security Agencies

The United States helps the Salvadoran government organize a rural paramilitary force known as the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN) and the Salvadoran National Security Agency (ANSESAL) under the auspices of General Jose Alberto “Chele” Medrano, who is a senior officer in the National Guard and Armed Forces High Command of El Salvador. As early as 1963, the Green Berets send over ten counterinsurgency trainers to help Medreno. Both agencies are formed with the stated purpose of combating communism. ORDEN is tasked with “indoctrinat[ing] the peasants regarding the advantages of the democratic system and the disadvantages of the communist system,” but also operates as an intelligence network. Intelligence relating to “subversive” activities will regularly be relayed to ANSESAL and then to the office of the president, who will then take “appropriate action.” ORDEN in particular will be later blamed for numerous human rights abuses, with Amnesty International accusing it of being created with the intention of using “clandestine terror against government opponents.” One of the offshoots of ORDEN, the White Hand (Mano Blanco), is later called “nothing less that the birth of the death squads” by a former US ambassador to El Salvador. [The Progressive, 5/1984; Montgomery, 1995, pp. 55-56]