Maddalena, beyond the news

Impossible to assimilate the news. Defying all the laws of logic and physics, Magdalena has always seemed eternal to me. She, news and current events were inextricably linked conceptsin a sort of tacit pact sealed for ever and ever.

Being a classmate of the eldest daughter allowed me, from an early age, to have another vision and another approach. I have learned to love her, far beyond professional respect.

In the room, in front of a microphone, with his famous “Looking Machine” from the Fontana Video Show, in everyday life something has remained unchanged: it has been a whirlwind. Y a person of unfailing consistency and integrity.

Talking about it is talking about the history of journalism and the history of Argentina. Undisputed pioneer of generations of journaliststreasuring prizes and awards here and abroad, he has kept his curiosity, humility, commitment and ethics intact in his task right up to the end.

It didn’t matter how dedicated she was: she worked overtime like the budding reporter.

The profession has made us coincide on many occasions. I remember, in the early 90s, a meeting in Washington of International Women’s Media Foundation, which was celebrating its anniversary and to which we had been invited from Argentina. As part of the activities, a gala was organized at the Four Seasons hotel, where Ted Turner was a stellar speaker.

Sheathed in her gala dress, in her flirtatious evening bag, in the middle of the whirlpool tub in the atrium, Magdalena pulled out a minimal hand-held recorder and He asked him a couple of questions as if it were a cell phone on the hunt for the impossible interviewee and not a stellar attendee of the gala.

on the same journey, in the middle of the night, with the reels still on, he connected every day with his program on Radio Miterprofessional all the way, forced to wake up even earlier than in Buenos Aires.

Generous, sensitive and invariably kind and polite, she never lost a certain naivety.

On another trip by the same organization to Chile, in the middle of a visit to a large local handicraft workshop, he worried that he had not bought anything for one of the participants, from Haiti, who had recounted in great detail the situation of misery that devastated his country. Upon returning to the hotel, we discovered that Miriam, the journalist in question, had wiped out a huge amount of figurines, decorations and more, arranged in boxes in the lobby, while each of us returned with a small souvenir in hand. “Did you see ?, – he told me – I’m still the same fool”.

Her sense of humor – “For many years, after the separation from my first husband and father of my children, we continued to go to family reunions together. I didn’t want to upset my parents, who didn’t approve of the divorce– or “I’ve changed the color of my hair so much that I don’t even know what it looked like originally” – went hand in hand with her unyielding courage.

From the radio he confronted the military of the dictatorship, which earned him threats and more, and he was the first to give a microphone to Hebe de Bonafini and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

In the midst of Kirchnerism, when Bonafini attacked her and her portrait was in the Plaza de Mayo for anyone who wanted to spit on it, Magdalena aired Hebe’s audio thanking her and acknowledging her courage in giving her voice in those dark times.

With the same courage he joined the historic CONADEPwhose task there defined as “descent into hell”.

Owner of an impressive cultural background, she told with surprising naturalness the most incredible stories she had to recite and the events of history that her profession led her to tell.

A pioneer in various media, she was also a pioneer in her personal life: her long and close relationship with the “Tano” Sergio Dellacha It was one of the first couples “out of bed” in these parts, at a time when the modality was not frequent.

A teacher of life and journalism, it is difficult to get used to the idea that now we have to write about her in the past tense. Farewell, Magdalene, and thank you for the teachings of journalism and life.