The Burden: Avenger

Ohla, dear listener, Gomostas. Today we're going to go back in time, actually to one of the darkest moments in the history of Argentina, the military dictatorship that ruled the country during the nineteen seventies and early eighties. Miriam Lewin was kidnapped by soldiers when she was just nineteen years old. She spent time in a concentration camp. A lot of other people never made it back home. About thirty thousand were disappeared in Argentina during this period, which is known

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.

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, nineteen seventy seven. Medium is in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She's nineteen. It's been a year since Argentina's military 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 ninety two, 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, his 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

From Orbit Media, I'm andres Caaba Schedo. This is Avenger. The story of Medium Lewin, Episode one. The process. Fast forward three decades to twenty ten. It's four in the afternoon, the busiest time of day at Canal Trece, a national TV channel in Buenos Aires. Medium sits in her office chair looking through a big glass window that the car is driving by. In Argentina. Medium is a well known investigative journalist and she's relentless going after a purple traders

Number, Ola Medium, Ola Bruno Olae.

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, no pud career.

See Ino 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. The hose logs date back to the late seventies and early eighties, when the military junta was in power. It was all there dates, roots, origin, destination, and the most important part, the names of the pilots.

I spent a lot of my childhood in Argentina in the early nineties at my grandfather's repair shop behind our house. It was a middle class suburb of Buennos Aires, and every morning I would wake up to Radio Colonna, 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

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 tell me to just go to hell. The photos were just an excuse for us to me. 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 thirties, Giancadlo 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 jian. Cadlo's request comes at a good time.

I was in a bad place emotionally at the time. I was in my fifties. My two boys were in their mid twenties, 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 gian Cadlo at a cafe in the center of what Asidis. It's a gray, windy day in August, and Medium comes straight from her office wearing her signature fluorescent orange jack, her red curly hair blowing in the wind. The cafe is on Avenida and Withe Julia, a majestic avenue lined up with purple Jagaranda trees. It's not the first time that a foreign journalist contacts Medium for an interview, but Giancarlo is different.

He says high with a kiss on the cheek. He's clearly non 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 in her eyes have this light to them, and a lot of the survivors of interview didn't have the light in their eyes.

They start talking. Gian Cadlo seems eager, too eager. He's leaning toward Medium over the table. Medium is not impressed. The whole setup seems off.

I'm thinking, who 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, his smiles and asks me a question.

Do you know where the planes use 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 twelve 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.

Gian Cardlo'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.

Medium 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 live 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

When Medium'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 sixty days, six thousand metal workers struck unofficially against wage restraint. In face of huge inflation.

And political violence. Intentions grew the government.

Federal police moved in. Five hundred workers were sacked and one hundred and forty three flung in jail without trial. One man handing out leaflets was machine gun from a police car. Another shot dead while painting a slogan on a wall.

It was ruthless Lasa las continua parsonal leftist group's retaliate target and government officials police chiefs.

Six point thirty one morning in this down at hill, 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 eighty 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 Montenados. 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.

During the last months of nineteen seventy five, everyone already knew that a military coup was about to happen. It was March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. 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.

Argentina's armed forces took control a coup led by General jrgue Rafelbidela. 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. If the professor reorganization national.

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. I remember a friend telling me he was leaving the country because he'd heard that the military was planning a blood bath, 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 blood bath my friend

General Videla is 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 in grays and John al Salon Blanco. Everyone is standing. Suddenly, two giant doors open and General Videla appears. His tall, slim with a thick mustache. He has a stern look, and he takes the oath Joe.

Rumors about horrific torture started going around.

The rumors are true. The Junta takes its crack down and left his 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 are 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

By then, MEDIUM had fallen in love with a fellow journalism student, juan Is Davis. 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.

Juana 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, 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 soldier, I would freak out, and Juan calm 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, it felt like ten years. We made love a lot. We loved each other, but we

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 years 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,

Two nights before her kidnapping, Medium 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 noticed 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 seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, 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 in 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 try to puncture the pill with my teeth as fast as I could, but the officers catch on and force me to spit it out. 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 Meati, this is Avenger, the Story of Medium Lewin. I'm your host and Senior producer Andresca Vaccheedo. The series was produced by es Seguiel, Rodrie Sandino and edited by Monica Campbell. Original score Nicolas Paschella, mixing and mastering Christopher Hoff and Austin Smith. Assistant producers andres Feschtenholz and Eleanna Gillespi. FactCheck Alejandro Marinelli and leonardos Canone. Legal review Neil Rossini.