El Salvador, Nationalist Democratic Organization (ORDEN)

ORDEN, Spanish for "order," was a paramilitary vigilance organization in El Salvador during the 1960s and 1970s. Founded in about 1964 by National Guard commander José Alberto Medrano, ORDEN sought to indoctrinate peasants in anti-communism, mobilize support for the governing National Conciliation Party, and police the countryside for suspected subversives. In return for protection and benefits, ORDEN members engaged in domestic espionage and the physical harassment of enemies of the regime, and they played a major role in the political violence of the 1970s. Most of ORDEN's estimated 100,000 members, however, probably joined only for self-protection. When a power struggle in 1970 led to Medrano's ouster, the Salvadoran army assumed control of ORDEN, and the president of the republic became its titular head. The provisional junta that replaced president Carlos Humberto Romero dissolved ORDEN in November 1979.

See alsoParamilitaries in Latin America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Good discussions of Salvadoran politics in the 1960s and 1970s are in James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America (1988), and Sara Gordon Rapoport, Crisis política y guerra en El Salvador (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Brockett, Charles D. Political Movements and Violence in Central America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Ellacuría, Ignacio. Veinte años de historia en El Salvador (1969–1989): Escritos políticos. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1991.

                                             Stephen Webre