Amado grew up in rural Argentina and, after training to be a teacher, earned a degree in political science from the Catholic University of Santiago del Estero.

Coming into contact with feminists, she conducted research on indigenous women at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET, Latin American Institute for Transnational Studies) and prepared her thesis.

The oldest of four siblings, Amado attended school in Lugones until the sixth grade, when her family moved to Santiago del Estero.

[9] She met Nicolás Casullo [es], an advisor to Jorge Taiana in the Departamento de Cultura y Comunicación (Department of Culture and Communication).

[9] When Isabel Perón succeeded her husband as President of Argentina, she allowed José López Rega to become the de facto Prime Minister.

[12] Her documentary film, Ruidos en la cabeza (Noises in the Head) created for Productora Creativos Audiovisuales (Creative Audiovisual Productions), aired in 1976.

[4] Casullo eventually joined her in Venezuela, but as he was legally unable to work, the couple decided to move to Mexico City that year, when they were offered paid employment at El Universal.

She was hired by UNAM to teach and as a director for the Grupo Cine de la Resistencia (Resistance Film Group) in the department of cinematography.

[13] Between 1977 and 1983, Amado wrote film reviews for the newspaper Unomásuno and worked as an editor for the journal Comunicación y Cultura (Communication and Culture).

[13] At the same time, she conducted research at Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET, Latin American Institute for Transnational Studies) focusing on indigenous women.

[15] Schooling for her daughters and submitting her thesis, El discurso femenino como comunicación alternativa (The Female Discourse as Alternative Communication), were her first priorities.

The thesis had been completed with the advisor Héctor Schmucler [es],[15] a former faculty member of the philosophy and letters department at the University of Buenos Aires, whom she had known in Mexico while working at his magazine Comunicación y Cultura.

In 1989, Chilean feminists she had known in Mexico returned home and founded Red alternativa de Prensa femenina en América Latina (FEMPRES, Alternative Network of Women's Press in Latin America), and she began working as its Argentine correspondent.

[18] That year, representing the arts, she began working with other women academics, including anthropologist Mirta Ana Barbieri; educationalist Nora Domínguez; historians Mirta Zaida Lobato, Susana Murphy, and Marcela Nari; and philosopher Margarita Roulet to create an interdisciplinary women's studies curriculum.

[18][19][20] She and Domínguez created a course, "Construcciones y narraciones de género en cine, literatura y prensa escrita" ("Gender Constructions and Narratives in Cinema, Literature and the Written Press"), which they offered through 1998.

[4] It analyzed the way politics changed films over the period, first creating the myths of the regime, then completely ignoring the terror and repression, and finally questioning and demanding answers for the lack of portrayals.

[23] In 2010, she was awarded a two-year Guggenheim Fellowship[21] to continue her evaluation of political insurgency and public perception as depicted in Argentine visual arts.

[26][27] In addition to founding the journal Mora and her own publishing, she contributed chapters to several anthologies and was the editor of Ediciones Colihue's book series on cinema.