Norma Morandini

Norma Elena Morandini (born 31 March 1948) is an Argentine journalist and politician. She was elected to the Argentine Senate in 2009, and was nominated as running mate by Progressive Front presidential candidate Hermes Binner for the 2011 campaign

Life and times Morandini was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1948. Her mother served as President of the Córdoba chapter of the Communist Party of Argentina during the 1960s. She enrolled at the National University of Córdoba, and earned degrees in communications, psychology, and medicine. She joined the Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina following its 1968 break from the Communist Party, and lost two brothers as desaparecidos in the subsequent Dirty War.

She sought exile in Spain, where she continued her career in journalism. She worked in Lisbon from 1977 to 1980 as a news correspondent for the Pyresa news agency, for El Correo Catalán, and Revista Cambio 16, as well as for the Portuguese magazine Visao. She met left-wing journalist and Brazilian exile Flávio de Freitas Tavares, and they were married in 1980. Her career as a correspondent for Cambio 16 first took her to Brazil in 1978, and despite being separated from her husband (who was unable to return to Brazil, where he had been tortured), she would live there until 1984.

Morandini covered the Trial of the Juntas and subsequent trials against officers implicated in the Dirty War for the leading Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo until 1987. She remained in Buenos Aires, and her first book Catamarca (regarding the María Soledad Morales murder and other abuses in Catamarca Province), was published in 1991. She hosted an interview program on the TN news network, Temas & Debates, from 1992, and earned a Martín Fierro Award for her work in the program in 1994, as well as two Broadcasting Awards.