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
Chapter 1: Who is Miriam Lewin and what is her story?
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.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Miriam face during her activism?
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 Medium, 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. 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.
Chapter 3: How did Miriam become a journalist?
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.
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. Medium looks at her phone. It's a U.S. number. An Argentine reporter calling from Florida, Medium 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.
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.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the death flights?
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 retaliate, targeting government officials, police chiefs.
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.
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Chapter 5: How did Miriam's past influence her journalistic career?
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 Miriam, 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, right? 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. 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.
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Chapter 6: What led to the collaboration between Miriam and Giancarlo?
Fact check, Alejandro Marinelli and Leonardo Scanone. Legal review, Neil Rossini. Casting director, Paula Gammon-Wilson. The executive producers from Orbit Media are Steve Fishman, Fisher Stevens, Marcy Wiseman, and Katie Springer.
The voice actors in Avenger include Alexis Bledel as Miriam Lewin, Fulvio de la Volta as Giancarlo Seraudo, Gonzalo Vargas as Enrique Piñero, Edgardo Manono Castro as Bruno Vane, and Tom Schubert as Carlos Maco Somiliana en Gustavo. This podcast was produced in association with Sonoro. The Sonoro executive producers are 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 Medium Lewin and Giancarlo Seraudo for letting us tell their story.
Thank you for listening.
For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.
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