It is February 2025. Esmeralda Miter wants to visit the grave of her father Bartolomé in the Recoleta cemetery and on the way she crosses the pantheon of Eva Perón, at the other ideological extreme. But the heir of the former director of La Nación years ago assumed she was a Peronist. He kneels before the remains of the mythical Evita, prays a rosary to her and then whispers to her: “You who did so much for the poor, please do something for me because I am so poor at this moment, I feel so poor in my soul.”
The Miter heiress is not financially poor, but she had just suffered the episode in which her own family tried to institutionalize her with the excuse of an alleged psychiatric condition to take advantage in the dispute over assets.
Now, nine months later, Esmeralda remembers the scene with Evita in her apartment on Copernico Street, very close to the cemetery, in a conversation with NOTICIAS: “I used to have quite critical thoughts about her and as I was thinking and studying more, there is something in which I did feel very represented after the kidnapping, that I thought I was not going to get over that anymore, and I am getting over it. I thought I had had so many terrible issues before, and this one about the attempted hospitalization was the most terrible. That’s why I prayed to her. Avoid…”
The one who speaks in this interview – in which for the first time she will delve into her contacts with the K world and with Cristina Kirchner, and even her relationship with Javier Milei – is a rare bird in the Miter clan. A Peronist Miter, who also cannot fail to mention Cristina even when the conversation takes place in other ways, such as those of the brand new film that has her as the leading actress, “Putas”, released these days. The way CFK sneaks into the middle of the talk is a sign of the incredible political metamorphosis of the family rebel.
Director Demian Alexander says: “I thought Esmeralda had to play the character and we called her just at a time when I had named her Cristina, but I was not aware of that, I don’t watch television. She thought we were calling her for that, and no.”
Esmeralda gestures for him to shut up, but it’s too late.
News: Sorry, why had I named you Cristina?
Esmeralda Miter: (Smiles). Well, if you want, I’ll tell you… It was in 2019, because I had posted a tweet that María Eugenia Vidal lived in this area, which they call “the island”, I met her several times at the pharmacy, then entering her building, and I wondered how someone with a state salary could move to a neighborhood like this. And then Cristina, at the close of her campaign that year, told that and named me.
News: A few weeks ago, in September, you went to see her and took a photo with her in her house arrest. How did that happen?
Miter: Actually, I and Cristina have been in dialogue for quite some time. Only this is the first time one of our meetings has been made public…
News: How long have you had a dialogue?
Miter: Since 2020, after that campaign closing. The relationship began the year after that campaign.
News: How did you get there?
Mitre: It was because of Deputy Eduardo Valdés, who seems to me to be a very serious person and is someone for whom I have a lot of affection. He wanted to make this union and we got together to talk, of course, about issues of power, about issues of the newspaper.
News: Where did they meet?
Mitre: It was precisely in the house that Deputy Valdés has, whom I respect very much and I want to say, I wish there were more people like him: cultured, prepared and honest. And the meeting was with my lawyers, Daniel Llermanos and Gabriel Len.
News: Was it to get to know each other or was it for something in particular?
Miter: Actually it was to get to know each other and talk about the whole situation that was happening with the newspaper.
News: So she was interested in what was happening in La Nación, in your fight with the Saguier family, the majority shareholders.
Miter: Yes, interested in the diary and in getting to know me too. And from there a relationship arose, let’s say. And, of course, I also have a good relationship with Vidal.
News: How many times did you see Cristina?
Mitre: No, we saw each other three times, four times, but the first time we made it public was now, so…
News: Was your family surprised by that photo? In reality, you were already close to Peronism.
Mitre: Yes, I don’t know when that inclination began… With my ex, Darío Lopérfido, we were in the Buenos Aires government, well, in reality he was Minister of Culture and therefore so was I, because I wasn’t a figure either… I wasn’t a person who was decorated. We were two people who were very intellectually united and we were a team. And I am beginning to see all the things that were happening in the Buenos Aires government at that time, under Mauricio Macri and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. I began to see everything that was happening and how they were being white-collar thieves.
News: And that’s when you distance yourself from the PRO?
Miter: At first I told myself: but how? Well, I’m starting to see all that, corruption wherever you look…
News: Anyway, one thing is to distance yourself from the PRO and another is a Peronist Miter.
Miter: And well… I started to see all that and there wasn’t a game in the middle, it was one thing or the other. And automatically when I saw all that was happening, I began to get closer to Peronism and I began to realize that certain ideas they had were good. It seems to me that Peronism is much more empathetic with people.
News: When was that conversion?
Miter: Around 2018, 2019… I mean, I also became a Peronist because I started to realize it. I’m already separated.
News: Was there any specific event that made you say “now I am a Peronist”?
Mitre: When I see that everything that happened there, they were very great acts of corruption. There, well, it was one thing or the other. And I began to become a Peronist also because it was born to me, because I felt it intrinsically.
News: Years ago you were very critical of Kirchnerism. You went so far as to declare that they were fanatics.
Miter: Fanaticism is wrong.
News: I remember that you challenged Mike Amigorena for having played Héctor Magnetto in a K production.
Miter: One changes and learns, that is a sign of intelligence. If one always thought the same…
News: Where do you know “Gordo” Valdés, who introduced you to Cristina?
Miter: I know him because he also contacted me. Starting from the theme of La Nación. But the meeting with Cristina was a very human talk, from woman to woman.
News: Are we talking about the last one, the one now?
Miter: Yes, all of them too. They were very honest, where she also opened up to me.
News: A few years ago you said that Mauricio Macri had bought the La Nación+ channel.
Miter: What Mauricio Macri would have done (highlights the conditional), or would be doing, is put a sum of money with other people. It would have been Alejandro MacFarlane, it would have been Galperín…
News: It is true that the channel treats him well.
Miter: Of course, of course, why? Because they put together, they would have put together more than 30 million dollars so that my cousins, the Saguiers, could pay that debt they had in the canal.
The Miter heiress also talks about contacts with the current Government. He remembers the time he found out about a clandestine visit by Vice President Victoria Villarruel to Julio Saguier, the group’s strong man, and leaked it not only to the media but also to Milei himself.
“I sent the meeting to the front – she remembers -, it was as soon as they assumed that Villarruel was going to meet with Saguier secretly from the President himself. I found out that this meeting was going to exist because I have my informants in there, so I called the media, I covered all the entries in the newspaper with the press. With the strategy that I made, she had no way to get in, I knew what time she was leaving the Government House and she arrived without custody, she alone, with her car, and since she didn’t have any entrance because I had covered them, the one for the directory which is in the parking lot next door, plus the main one, plus the one in the back, they were all covered, a very strange thing automatically happened, which is that the Saguiers had to go down to receive it, pretending to receive it in a spontaneous and legal way, when in reality they were doing that secretly from the President. I already had a prepared text that we were going to send to Javier Milei, notifying him, and he thanked me for having warned him: “This is happening right now.”
News: Do you have dialogue with the President?
Miter: Yes, I have dialogue.
News: Do you write to him? Or what is the dialogue like?
Miter: I have known the President long before he was President, he seems like a good person to me, it seems to me that he has good intentions. But everything around him… it seems to me that he lacks power, because power, as Machiavelli said, is something that you either have or you don’t have.
News: Is the environment the problem?
Mitre: The environment for me is the problem. For me.
News: Does the environment include the sister and the advisor?
Miter: More than anything, it seems to me, to the advisor, Santiago Caputo.
News: What do you think about Karina Milei?
Miter: Well, it seems to me that everything that happened is clearly very serious, in two years of government that this is happening, and that she is accused of this bribery situation, it seems to me that there should be greater clarity. The things that happened in corruption are very serious in just two years, when they keep saying that that’s what others are. Very serious things happened in Kirchnerism, of course, but they were there for twelve years, right? Or more.
News: Where do you know Milei from? From the media?
Miter: No, I met him because he did stand up and he invited me to see his show. At the Regina.
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