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36 1 MONTSERRAT LOCATION: VIRREY CEVALLOS 630 TRANSPORTATION: SUBWAY STATIONS: INDEPENDENCIA (E & C LINES). BUSES: 2, 6, 12, 98, 111, 129, 130, 143, 152, 195. A. Alsina Virrey Cevallos Cte. de los Pozos Chile Méjico Venezuela Av. Independencia Av. Belgrano Moreno Estados Unidos C. Calvo Av. Entre Rios Lima Av. 9 de julio B. de Irigoyen Pte. L. S. Peña Salta San José Sgo. del Estero Sara ndí Solís Est. Moreno Est. Independencia Est. Independencia 6 LÍNEA E LÍNEA C 6 . Virrey Cevallos Miriam Lewin was nineteen years old when the Air Force Intelligence Services kidnapped her as she was leaving the factory where she worked in Lomas del Mirador . She was disappeared and detained in the Clandestine Detention Center that operated in a private house at 628 Virrey Cevallos Street, in the neighborhood of Monserrat . Lewin had become involved in an anarchist movement in the early 1970s, when she was still in high school . She later joined the Peronist University Youth Movement* (JUP , Juventud Universitaria Peronista) and the Montoneros* . She was first taken to Police Station 44 (see “Police stations as sites of illegal detention, ” p . 255): “For some reason they moved me to another room after the first torture session . There I was tied to one of those bed frames with metal strips that form a grid . . . . I never knew who had tortured me . I spent quite a long time in that place . At one point . . . they took me to Virrey Cevallos 628 . They took me up to a room that was in a kind of mezzanine , in a courtyard with very high walls . There were two cells on that floor, and they locked me up in one of them . The cell was completely covered in hardboard, which is a kind of brown material filled with small holes” [AO .0065] . The house on Virrey Cevallos had two floors . Kidnapping victims were brought in through a garage; to the left was the torture room, followed by a courtyard with stairs leading up to a mezzanine floor with the two cells . According to survivors, agents of the Federal Police and Army also worked at this site . Lewin spent ten and a half months in isolation . It is not known for certain how many kidnapped people were held at Virrey Cevallos . The only testimony besides Miriam Lewin’s was by Osvaldo López, who was kidnapped from his home in San Miguel, in the province of Buenos Aires . He managed to escape sometime later (see “Automotores Orletti, ” p . 220, and “House in Franklin Street, ” p . 226) . Lewin describes what life was like in the center: “Once they secretly took me into the kitchen on the first floor to make me wash the dishes, without letting the commanding officers know . Some of the plates bore PLAQUE HUNG ON THE FAÇADE OF THE FORMER CLANDESTINE DETENTION CENTER. 37 Air Force insignia . Very few kidnapped people were held there during the time I spent there . There was a room off the patio where they tortured people . They brought people there to torture them all the time, but they didn’t keep them there . They took them away after, I guess to the Seré Mansion* . I could hear the screams of people being tortured; I suspect it wasn’t just me [who could hear] but all the neighbors too . When they would take me down to the bathroom I could see the little windows of the building next door; they weren’t too bothered about covering up the noises . They would turn on Radio Rivadavia, but at times the screams could be heard very clearly . . . . When they took me out of there, they moved me to the ESMA [Navy School of Mechanics]” [AO] . Lewin was transferred to the Navy School of Mechanics (see p . 153) . She was released in early 1979 under a “regime of supervised release” and worked at the Ministry of Social Welfare . Some time later she was able to obtain a passport and go into exile . She later returned to Argentina and testified in the Trial of the Military Juntas* in 1985*; in 1988 she was able to identify the Clandestine Detention Center on Virrey Cevallos Street . In 2001 Lewin and other survivors published the book Ese infierno (That hell), a collection of accounts by five female survivors of ESMA . In it, Lewin also describes her imprisonment at Virrey Cevallos . The San Cristóbal Neighborhood Association Against Impunity organized to recover this site, and in 2004 the...

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