SWD 25

Sister Maura Clarke, Jewish-Argentine Fernando Brodsky

Remembering victims of human rights atrocities in the Americas: Sister Maura Clarke, an American Maryknoll missionary, murdered by El Salvador military, 1980; and Fernando Brodsky, “un desaparecido,” murdered by the Argentine military, 1979.

Art: 2017
Media: Ink, pencil, gouache on paper
Paper size: 30.5 in. H x 12 W

The drawing was begun late Sept. 2016; completed Feb 1, 2017.

The wings were drawn at the ornithology lab, Burke Museum of Natural History, Univ. of Washington, Seattle.

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The wing drawn on the portrait of murdered Maryknoll sister Maura Clarke is from a hawk, from Argentina. The wing being drawn on the portrait of Fernando Brodsky is from a teal, which is a type of duck, also from Argentina.

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Maura Clarke was born January 13, 1931 in Queens, NY. She and three other American missionary nuns were raped and murdered by four National Guard soldiers in El Salvador, Dec. 2, 1980. A Maryknoll Sister, she was 49. Several high-ranking officers in the El Salvadoran military participated in a cover-up following the crime. Afterwards, the U.S. government granted permanent residency in the U.S. to several of those officers.

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The portrait of the young man depicts Fernando Brodsky, a young Jewish Argentinian. He was born October 30, 1956. When he was 22, he disappeared, on August 14, 1979.

After his arrest he was detained in the notorious Escuela de la Armada (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, and remains disappeared. The Spanish language term is that he was "un desaparecido," one of the disappeared.

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“In the end they had him thrown from a plane, drugged but alive, into the sea.”

Quote from a 2011 article on the trial of three men who murdered Brodsky.

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Brodsky fue nacio (en Argentina) el 30 de Octubre, 1956. Desaparedico el 14 de Agosto de 1979. 

La American romana católica, hermana Maura Clarke, due nacio en Queens, Nueva York, 1931;  asesinados en El Salvador, 1980.