Uncover - Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Avenger from Orbit Media tells the story of Miriam Lewin, one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. More episodes of Avenger are available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-burden/id1734312219

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. from Orbit Media, and it's one of the year's most anticipated podcast releases, following Orbit's hit shows My Friend the Serial Killer, The Burden, and Empire on Blood. Avenger tells the story of Miriam Lewin, one of Argentina's leading journalists, today. At 19, Miriam was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp by the dictatorship. In prison, thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from cargo planes into the ocean. But Miriam avoided that fate, became a journalist, and then waged a decades-long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. All the interviews were done in Spanish. The English was voiced by Emmy winner

Alexis Bledel from Handmaid's Tale and Gilmore Girls, who is half Argentine and directed by Oscar winner Fisher Stevens. Avenger is about one woman's triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Now, here's the first episode of Avenger. Before we begin, please note that for this story, we interviewed Medium and everyone else for dozens of hours in Spanish. We hired actors to voice their words in English.

English. By then, it was much more than a feeling. I knew that I was being followed. I avoided going to my family's house because I knew they would be there, waiting for me. It's late afternoon, 1977. Miriam is in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She's 19. It's been a year since Argentina's military seized power. A coup to bring back peace and stability, says the military dictator. People like Miriam, a young political dissident, are now targets.

I was actually worried about my grandmother. It had been a while since I'd last seen her. She was 92 and she was frail. I just wanted to call, you know, check in. I get to the phone booth and I notice a man in line. He's young, slim and he's wearing a jean jacket and I see that when his turn comes up he doesn't end up making a call. So now I'm on alert. I start heading toward the nearest bus stop where at least there were more people around. or the nearest bus stop where at least there were more people around.

First, he follows me to the bus stop, then I see him inside the bus. I immediately jump off at a random stop, but he also manages to get out. So I turn my head and I see a dark red Ford Falcon and a long gun barrel hanging out from one of the windows. Now I'm running out of ideas. I run into a nearby store and when I look back I see that three men were following. I try to stay calm and make my way through the meat aisle pretending I'm shopping. There's no back exit, so I take off again through the front door. I try to catch a bus that was slowing down, and the Ford Falcon speeds up right toward me. The bus driver, other people try to help,

but the men pull out their guns and scare everybody away. The bus also takes off. They tackle me, and they tell me they're police. So I start screaming, I'm Miriam Lewin. Please help me. From Orbit Media, I'm Andres Caballero. This is Avenger, the story of Miriam Lewin. Episode 1, The Process Fast forward three decades to 2010. It's four in the afternoon, the busiest time of day at Canal 13, a national TV channel in Buenos Aires.

Miriam sits in her office chair, looking through a big glass window at the cars driving by. a national TV channel in Buenos Aires. Medium sits in her office chair, looking through a big glass window at the cars driving by. In Argentina, Medium is a well-known investigative journalist, and she's relentless, going after perpetrators of sexual abuse. She's reported from Gaza, Russia, lots of places. Now, she's in the middle of the biggest investigation of her career. Miriam looks at her phone. It's a U.S. number.

Hola. Hola, Miriam. Hola, Bruno. Sí, hola. Sí, decime. An Argentine reporter calling from Florida. Miriam had recently hired him to help her follow up on a tip. She had sent him to meet the owner of a small plane that maybe had once been used by Argentina's dictatorship to kill hundreds of people. They were tossed out of planes, alive, into the sea. Somehow, the plane ended up in Fort Lauderdale. Medium hoped that it still held clues, evidence of the atrocities. We had no money to make the trip ourselves, so we hired a stringer, a freelance journalist, and actually, Bruno was a sports commentator. No se puede creer, si.

En serio? On the phone, the reporter confirms it's the right plane. I mean, we never even dreamed of running into something so valuable. And then the owner of the plane shows him the flight logs that were left inside, untouched. Those logs date back to the late 70s and early 80s, when the military junta was in power. It was all there. Dates, routes, origin, destination, and the most important part, the names of the pilots.

I spent a lot of my childhood in Argentina. In the early 90s, at my grandfather's repair shop, behind our house. It was a middle-class suburb of Buenos Aires, and every morning I would wake up to Radio Colonia, my grandfather's favorite station. Inside his repair shop, the floors and shelves were stacked with old radios, tools, and countless broken televisions. One day, he decided I was old enough to hear about the death flights. He told me how only about a decade earlier,

thousands of people had been kidnapped, loaded into airplanes, and thrown into the ocean. I was barely nine at the time. We lived several blocks from the shore. I could picture the planes above the water, bodies free-falling. I had a lot of questions, but my grandfather didn't have answers. This was in the 90s, and many Argentines were still searching for answers about loved ones who had gone missing. Mothers, fathers were still mourning, in fear and in silence. It seemed at times that Argentina, the entire country, was looking away, intent on burying the ghosts of

the past. For a long time, journalist Miriam Lewin wanted to bury them too. For good reason. She'd been one of the disappeared. Better to forget years of captivity, of torture. Then, one day, an annoying, rude, incredibly persistent Italian photojournalist entered her life, asking lots of uncomfortable questions. Theirs would be an unlikely alliance, but together they set out to bring justice to the victims of the vuelos de la muerte, the death flights. It would prove to be the investigation of a lifetime. The investigation would also become crucial in my search for answers. How did an entire country allow this to happen? Was there, will there ever be justice? Where were the pilots who flew the death flights?

In 2007, Giancarlo Seraudo is living in Buenos Aires. He's the annoying Italian photojournalist who gets in touch with Medium. He invites her to a cafe to take some photos. He says he's been assigned to take some portraits of me. I don't know, something about a story about survivors of the dictatorship. I had no idea whether she'd tell me to just go to hell. The photos were just an excuse for us to meet. I mean, why would I take portraits of a survivor inside a cafe?

I knew I wasn't going to use those photos. In his 30s, Giancarlo is a bit of a nomad. He's been all over the world, telling stories, taking photos, fulfilling his obsession to document the scars left by fascist governments. Recently, he traveled from Italy to Argentina on a mission. He's become obsessed with the death flights. He's heard about Medium and decided he needs her, a survivor and, just as important, a journalist on the ground who might help him find some answers.

And Giancarlo's request comes at a good time. I was in a bad place emotionally at the time. I was in my 50s. My two boys were in their mid-20s, so they were never home. The man I was with back then left me for a younger woman. I was alone, heartbroken. I needed some sort of distraction, something to occupy my time, even if it involved meeting a stranger to talk about trauma. She agrees to meet Giancarlo at a café in the center of Buenos Aires. It's a gray, windy day in August,

and Medium comes straight from her office, wearing her signature fluorescent orange jacket, her red curly hair blowing in the wind. The café is on Avenida Nueve de Julio, a majestic avenue lined up with purple jacaranda trees. It's not the first time that a foreign journalist contacts me for an interview. But Giancarlo is different. He says hi with a kiss on the cheek.

He's clearly not American. He has this baby face that makes him look in his mid-twenties and long wavy hair, green eyes and an earring. And I'm shocked by her face. She's beautiful and her eyes have this light to them. And a lot of the survivors that I interviewed didn't have that light in their eyes. They start talking. Giancarlo seems eager. Too eager. He's leaning toward Medium over the table. Medium is not impressed. The whole setup seems off. I'm thinking, how does this serious, prestigious Italian magazine send this guy to do a story about the dictatorship?

He just doesn't seem very professional. And then he grabs his camera and starts taking pictures of me without even looking into the camera. I thought that was kind of weird, so I asked if he got the shots that he needed. Instead of answering, he smiles and asks me a question. Do you know where the planes used for the dead flights are? He was kind of telling me,

how come you never thought of this? I was an experienced investigative reporter, so that felt like a lack of respect, you know? How dare he ask me that? I'm a survivor of a concentration camp. Also, I'm like 12 years older than him. I have no idea where the planes could be. And why?

Why should I care? But then again, through those planes, we could get to the pilots and maybe identify them. And that would be amazing. Giancarlo's convinced that if they could find the planes,

that could lead to the pilots of those death flights. I mean, these are the guys who were responsible for the genocidal machine that killed so many people. I'm trying to see how she would react, hoping it would make her want to help me with the investigation. That's their strategy, at least. And then Giancarlo pulls this strange-looking book from his backpack.

He puts it on the table. It's written by a guy named Adolfo Silingo, a former Navy captain. He was the first Navy officer to admit to being part of a death flight crew. I knew about Silingo. I mean, I had heard about him. But I hadn't seen this book yet.

It was an obscure book. Only a few copies were ever printed. Giancarlo gives it to her, and she puts it in her bag. Their meeting ends without a commitment. But it sparks something within her. Was there possibly something big to investigate? Something that had been overlooked? For a while, I avoided investigating the dictatorship.

Revisiting that trauma. I had friends who were put on those death flights. I didn't feel I could stick to journalistic boundaries like my emotions might betray me at any moment and send me into a breakdown. Miriam grew up in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She was an intellectual child. She loved books and poetry. Her dad was a big influence.

He was a leftist. He gave her books about socialism, workers' movements. When my dad noticed me bringing flyers home, bringing the anarchist paper, he started feeding me more anarchist literature. Soon, she was an activist. I was into political militancy, but I also loved the idea of working for a newspaper. I was a good writer,

so I signed up for journalism school. The problem was my parents wanted me to have a real career, so I had to enroll in economics at the same time to appease them. We were young, but we felt like we'd lived through a lot. Social change, access to education, better salaries, it all seemed at our fingertips. I mean, it didn't feel like a fantasy. It felt like we could actually change the world. I wanted to see a country where there was equality. We were young and we felt invincible. When Miriam's parents started to worry about her safety, they offered to fly her to Brazil or somewhere outside Argentina. Abandoning the cause wasn't even an option for us.

We thought if we abandoned the militancy and activism, we would be betraying our friends who gave their lives for the movement. The economy was in shambles. For 60 days, 6,000 metal workers struck unofficially against wage restraint in face of huge inflation. Political violence and tensions grew. Federal police moved in. 500 workers were sacked and 143 flung in jail without trial. One man handing out leaflets was machine-gunned from a police car.

Another shot dead while painting a slogan on a wall. It was ruthless. Leftist groups retaliated, targeting government officials, police chiefs. At 6.30 one morning in this down-at-heel Buenos Aires suburb, two cars pulled up. Five men got out, one knocked on the door. The policeman who answered received one bullet in the brain. The remaining men then drilled the front of the house with at least 80 bullets. Before leaving, they blasted holes in the roof with three grenades, injuring the man's widow and two children.

Violence divided the country. The best-known group targeting police and government forces was called the Montoneros. Some supported them, including Medium, as the best hope against forces of repression. But others saw only chaos and violence. They craved stability. Meanwhile, Medium was in the midst of a political awakening. She got a job at a factory and helped organize union workers. Her parents started to worry about her, but Medium was on a different path now. The entire nation was on edge.

Inflation was skyrocketing. The violence was getting worse. The government seemed powerless. During the last months of 1975, everyone already knew that a military coup was about to happen. It was March 24th, 1976. My mom barges into my room with a portable radio broadcasting about soldiers marching. And then she tells me that there was a coup. I remember being in bed and just getting into a fetal position and crying.

I was crying because I felt afraid of the changes that were coming. More control, less freedoms. I was crying because I felt afraid of the changes that were coming. More control, less freedoms. And I remember what it felt like to step out of my house for the first time, just after the coup. Watching the tanks rolling down the streets in the middle of the city. We had seen this before. the military that targets activists, sending them to jail, trying them in court.

We actually thought, we hoped, the military would help stop the violence. I never imagined an underground extrajudicial process. I never imagined they would kidnap me, put a hood on me, torture me. Argentina's armed forces took control. A coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. Up until then, he had played a neutral role when it came to politics. But he was the country's most powerful military leader. He promised peace, a stable economy. Officially, his plan was called the National Reorganization Process, or just the process. He would say things like, the process would require time and effort. They had their own vision for the country, a right-wing neoliberal nation with conservative Christian values.

Values that General Videla says were threatened by subversives. Students, union members, teachers, activists, people like Medium, who he vowed to, quote, annihilate. That rhetoric about preserving Western Christian values, about creating paranoia, that communism was taking over our country, to me, none of that was surprising. surprising. I remember a friend telling me he was leaving the country because he'd heard that the military was planning a bloodbath, that they were going to kill us all. We thought it was an exaggeration. We didn't see Argentina as a banana republic. And we had never witnessed the type of bloodbath my friend was predicting. We thought he was a coward. General Videla's swearing-in takes place inside the presidential palace. The room is filled with men

in green and blue military uniforms, Catholic bishops, and families of junta leaders watching from a balcony. Everyone is standing. Suddenly, two giant doors open and General Videla appears. He's tall, slim, with a thick mustache. He has a stern look and he takes the oath.

I, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla. Rumors about horrific torture started going around. The rumors are true. The Junta takes its crackdown on leftist groups to a new level. People having their arms ripped off their bodies, electric shocks, rape. The orders from our group leaders were clear. Do not be captured alive. For Medium, it means leaving her parents' house.

She knows she's a person of interest. She fears she will bring danger to her family, so she goes into hiding. The thing is that immediately after the coup, the military started arresting friends, people they knew. So we knew that the military were going to torture those friends and they had information about where I lived. And the reality is not everyone can endure torture. So if they gave your information, the military would be at my door. The fear and terror was not only aimed at armed groups or known activists. It was aimed at society. They were going after school teachers, professors, union members, and then they were targeting their families too. It was too dangerous for me to keep sleeping at home. Too dangerous for me to keep sleeping at home.

At one point, my dad didn't speak to me for at least six months. He was against my activism. He knew how committed I was, and he knew how dangerous it was. He was scared because people he knew were disappearing left and right, and he didn't want me to get killed. By then, Medium had fallen in love with a fellow journalism student, Juan Estevez. They met in college. He was an activist like her. He was sweet, adorable.

Never again did I feel the way I felt for Juan. His voice was so special. Just hearing him talk made me emotional. He loved his family and he loved me. After the coup, they drop out of journalism school and go underground. Juan and I got a place at first, but I would only sleep there a few days a week. I would lie to my parents. I'd tell them I was going to sleep at friends' houses. But then more of our friends started to get kidnapped, so we had to leave. We were never in the life of a typical couple.

We were on the move almost every week, living one day at a time. We never even thought about the future. Before they go underground together, they buy two cheap wedding bands and ask the leader of their activist group to marry them. And at that very informal ceremony, the guy called us a revolutionary couple. He said that our commitment to each other,

our vow, was to fight to change Argentina, to make it a more just place. And we moved to the outskirts of Buenos Aires and we got this tiny, tiny apartment with a tin roof. It was in the back of a family's house. roof. It was in the back of a family's house. And we started buying some furniture, a couple of chairs, a table and some plates, a cover for our bed. And we put a Beatles poster in the bedroom. Medium and Juan don't get to live there for very long. Crackdowns become more frequent. They have to go back to hiding at friends' houses or at cheap motels.

They're preparing for the worst. I looked out the window and if we saw anyone that looked like an officer or a soldier, I would freak out. And Juan calmed me down. He always told me I was paranoid. Everything was so intense. The loss of our friends, attending nearly empty group meetings because most people disappeared. I mean, for us, one day felt like ten years. We made love a lot. We loved each other, but we were living on the edge.

So every time we could touch each other, every time we could kiss each other, it was like it could be the last time. And there was one critical part of their group's training, that they would always carry a cyanide pill and pledge to swallow it before they were captured. We had decided to take our own lives before having to endure torture, which could lead to us giving away information, and that could lead to our friends getting captured. Also, it was an order coming from the leaders of our organization.

Don't get captured alive. To me, it was simple. You get captured, and they own your body. They would pass you over from one force to another, or if they wanted to, they would just put a bullet in your head. So they would dictate when and how you died. But with the cyanide pill, we were in control of our death. So it was kind of like a small victory over them, you know?

Two nights before her kidnapping, Miriam is walking through the streets of Buenos Aires, heading back to where she and Juan are staying. They're still in hiding. It was raining that night. I notice a car with foggy windows. Inside, I see the silhouettes of three or so men. I start zigzagging my way through the streets and corners to evade it, but sooner or later, it would be there again. Two days later, on May 17th, 1977, Medium finds herself running for her life, being chased by three men in a Ford Falcon.

And I keep screaming off the top of my lungs, I'm Miriam Lewin, please help me. She yells out her phone number, begging anyone who can hear to call her family. Then, the moment Medium and her fellow militants had prepared for. I reach into the pocket of my leather jacket. I take out the cyanide pill and I put it in my mouth. I look up at the sky. And in my head I think, God, thank you for letting me die to help save my friends.

Usually, cyanide pills are made out of glass. Once you crush it with your teeth, the glass cuts your mouth. The poison enters the bloodstream quickly. But medium cyanide capsule is homemade. It's plastic. I tried to puncture the pill with my teeth as fast as I could, but the officers catch on and force me to spit it out. I never imagined they would catch me alive. I was young, healthy, but at that moment I didn't hesitate. I just wanted to die. In the next episode, Medium is taken alive to a clandestine center to be interrogated. The exact scenario that she and her fellow comrades had tried to avoid at all costs.

He says, Miriam, look at me. I am the man responsible for your life and your death. As long as you collaborate, as long as you're good, nothing will happen to you. From Orbit Media, this is Avenger, the story of Miriam Lewin. I'm your host and senior producer, Andres Caballero.

The series was produced by Ezequiel Rodriguez-Sandino and edited by Monica Campbell. Original score, Nicolás Pachela. Mixing and mastering, Christopher Hoff and Austin Smith. Assistant producers, Andres Fechtenholz and Eliana Gillespie. Fact check, Alejandro Marinelli and Leonardo Scanone. Legal review, Neil Rossini. Casting director, Paula Gammon-Wilson. The executive producers from Orbit Media are The voice actors in Avenger include This podcast was produced in association with Sonoro. The Sonoro executive producers are Camila Victoriano, Joshua Weinstein, and Jasmine Romero.

Camila Victoriano, Joshua Weinstein, and Jasmine Romero. The rest of the Sonoro production team includes Senior Producer Carmen Graterol, Editor Rodrigo Crespo, Producer Paloma Navarro Nicoletti, Evelyn Uribe, Mariana Coronel, Sara Mota, Manuel Parra, Hannah Bottom, and Tasha Sandoval. Special thanks to Radio En Casa and Pomeranek Recording Studios in Buenos Aires and to Miriam Lewin and Giancarlo Seraudo for letting us tell their story Thank you for listening That was the first episode of Avenger.

Avenger is available right now wherever you listen to podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.