Alfredo Zitarrosa

Alfredo Zitarrosa was born in Montevideo in 1936. As a child, he lived with a family that was not his biological mother's. At a young age, his mother gave him to a married couple to raise, and he was called Alfredo Iribarne. Later, he became Alfredo «Pocho» Durán. He lived with that family in different neighborhoods of the capital, and then went to a town, Santiago Vázquez, where he spent part of his childhood. Sometimes he visited the rural area near Trinidad, where his adoptive mother was born. That experience marked him, because in his songs there is always a lot of what he heard from the peasants, especially from the milongas.

At 14 years old, he returned to Montevideo. He first lived with the Durán couple, then in a pension on Colonia street, and later in a attic that was also a pension, owned by his grandmother. There he began to form as a person. He worked as a salesman, an office clerk, in a printing press. He also had his first job in a company, thanks to a traveling companion. That man, Pacciello, helped him start.