c. 2000 Religion News Service

MARYKNOLL, N.Y. _ Women religious, human rights attorneys, family members and friends paid tribute Saturday, Dec. 2, to four American churchwomen on the 20th anniversary of their murders by members of El Salvador’s National Guard, saying the women’s lives evoked “the dangerous memory of Jesus” and his defense of the poor.

“In the end, they shared the same fate of the poor,” said Sister Barbara Hendricks of the Maryknoll Sisters of the deaths of fellow Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan. The four women were working on relief and assistance projects in El Salvador at the time of their deaths.

The commemoration at the Maryknoll Sisters Center was one of many commemorations in the United States and El Salvador. It capped a year of tribute and remembrance for those _ including Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in March 1980 _ who were slain in El Salvador during the height of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent Latin American history, a civil war that eventually resulted in some 75,000 deaths.

The four women were abducted, raped and killed on Dec. 2, 1980, by five Salvadoran National Guardsmen as they traveled from El Salvador’s international airport to the capital of San Salvador. At the time, clergy and religious workers working among the poor were, like Romero, labeled subversives and supporters of a left-wing insurgency. They became targets of El Salvador’s U.S.-backed military and its allied right-wing death squads.

The case of the four American churchwomen was credited with playing a major role in swaying public opinion against direct U.S. military involvement in El Salvador, and was also a galvanizing force for activism by progressive religious communities in Latin America and the United States.

“Their story is part of a larger story of the cause for justice,” said Maryknoll Sister Therese Howard, one of the organizers of the Dec. 2 commemoration. “It has been like throwing a pebble into a pond and seeing the ripples still flowing.”

The commemoration was attended by several hundred people, many of them members of the Maryknoll and Ursuline orders, and took on heightened meaning because it came almost a month to the day after a federal jury verdict in Florida cleared two retired Salvadoran generals _ Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia _ of “command responsibility” in the women’s murders.

The men, currently residents of Florida, were tried under a U.S. law that allows victims of torture or surviving family members to sue government officials who had the authority to prevent violent acts.

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The suit was brought by the families of the four women, and alleged that Vides Casanova and Guillermo Garcia were in a position of authority to prevent the crimes. The five guardsmen who committed the murders were convicted in 1984. Four of the men have said they were acting under orders.

The families of the women have asked for a retrial of the retired generals, who also face a trial next spring in a case being brought by Salvadoran immigrants now living in the United States who were tortured by members of the Salvadoran military.

The women’s family members and the Maryknoll community expressed anger and frustration over the Florida verdict. Howard suggested it was difficult, 20 years later, for Americans to grasp the overwhelmingly brutal realities of El Salvador at the time.

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For those who have kept the historical memories of El Salvador and the case of the four women alive, the Dec. 2 commemoration served as a moment of renewal. “The more I hear, the more upbeat I get,” Howard said. “The way this story impacts people’s lives is amazing. It’s a real gospel message in modern-day language.”

Attorneys with the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, who have worked with the families, said they are determined to see the case through and were philosophical about the latest verdict.

“It’s a setback,” said Robert Varenik, who has interviewed several of the Salvadoran guardsmen in prison. “But it’s not the first setback we’ve had in 20 years.”

“No case we have been involved with has been as important or as rewarding as this one,” said attorney Scott Greathead, who has represented the families in the case. “Lawyers generally don’t believe in miracles.”

A constant theme throughout the commemoration _ marked by liturgy, a panel discussion and a concert performance of “Missionaries,” a theater-musical piece about the women’s lives by composer Elizabeth Swados _ was that Ford, Clarke, Donovan and Kazel would not want the focus of any tribute to be on them, but rather on the tens of thousands of Salvadorans who lost their lives.

“If they knew we were only honoring them,” said Sister Antoinette Gutzler, “they would think we’d be doing a great disservice.”

Michael Clarke, a nephew of Maura Clarke, said the death of his aunt and the other women was a supreme testament to their sense of call and service. “Maura’s message was: `Never forget the needs of the poor.”’

DEA END HERLINGER