Andres Caballero
Appearances
Conspiracy Theories
Argentina's Death Flights
just terrify these people and get them so scared that not only would they give me the cash, they would give me their terror. It made me feel strong. All I know is we're f***ing helpless. All I know is anarchy. All I know is chaos. I just leaned into that.
Conspiracy Theories
Argentina's Death Flights
The first time I heard about the death flights and even about the dictatorship was when I was about nine years old in my grandfather's repair shop at our house just north of the city. And one day he just thought I was old enough to hear that just blocks away in the Rio de la Plata, the river right by my house, people had been thrown from planes into the sea and killed.
Conspiracy Theories
Argentina's Death Flights
Immediately for a kid, all these questions come up besides being horrified about why, you know? And my grandpa at the time, I remember he didn't really have any answers for me because it was the early 90s. And even though democracy returned to Argentina in 1983, it's not like we were learning about what had happened in the history books, right?
Conspiracy Theories
Argentina's Death Flights
It was still a system where there was a lot of shoving things under the rug. Such a large number of people, especially young people, are now barely reconnecting with this history. And there's still so many questions, right, up in the air. But the importance of knowing what happened and how can we prevent this from happening again?
Conspiracy Theories
Argentina's Death Flights
Because I think there is this collective loss of memory sometimes that happens to populations, to countries. And, you know, people just forget. And then we tend to fall into other trends.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Political violence and tensions grew.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Leftist groups retaliate, targeting government officials, police chiefs.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Values that General Videla says were threatened by subversives, students, union members, teachers, activists, people like Medium, who he vowed to, quote, annihilate.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
The rumors are true. The Junta takes its crackdown on leftist groups to a new level.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
By then, Medium had fallen in love with a fellow journalism student, Juan Estevez. They met in college. He was an activist like her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
After the coup, they drop out of journalism school and go underground.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Before they go underground together, they buy two cheap wedding bands and ask the leader of their activist group to marry them.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Two days later, on May 17th, 1977, Medium finds herself running for her life, being chased by three men in a Ford Falcon.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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's cyanide capsule is homemade. It's plastic.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
In the next episode, Miriam 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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
On the phone, the reporter confirms it's the right plane.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
It's not the first time that a foreign journalist contacts Medium for an interview, but Giancarlo is different.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
Giancarlo is convinced that if they could find the planes, that could lead to the pilots of those death flights.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
Uncover Introduces: Avenger from Orbit Media
When Miriam's parents started to worry about her safety, they offered to fly her to Brazil or somewhere outside Argentina.