Maria Eva Duarte was born to Juanita Ibarguren and Juan Duarte on May 7, 1919. She grew up in the town of Los Toldos, approximately 150 miles to the west of Buenos Aires, the capitol of Argentina.

Eva was born to a family with 1 son and 4 other daughters; she was the youngest of them all. Regardless of her place in the family, she grew up perhaps faster than any of her siblings.

Eva grew up the product of an affair. At this time in Argentina, being the product of an affair was far more shameful than being illegitimate. Eva saw her father come visit her mother, his casa chica (the other wife), and slowly began to develop a sense and hatred for the male chauvinism.

As well as being the product of a love affair, Eva also grew up not only jilted by general society (she often heard the cries of "Bastard!"), but poor as well. She lived in a town where she saw the houses of the rich on a daily basis, and she grew up to not so much love the poverty- stricken, but to abhor the rich. As she put it later, "There are rich and there are poor, and the odd thing is that the existance of the poor pains me less than the knowledge that at the same time others are rich."

Shortly after Juan Duarte's death, Eva's mother found a new "protector" to care for her and her children. Because of the financial assistance he offered, she was soon able to open a boarding house in Junin, and thus, Eva achieved part of her dream: to leave Los Toldos.

Once in Junin, Eva's mother successfully married off two of Eva's sisters to lodgers in the boarding house. Now that the number of children still at home had decreased, Eva knew that her mother would expect her to marry a lodger and stay at home to run the boarding house. This didn't fit in Eva's plans, though. Thus, when Augustin Magaldi, a semi-famous Tango singer, came through town and made it possible for Eva to leave with him (this theory is highly contested; many believe she left with Magaldi and his wife, others believe she was having an affair with Magaldi and ran away with him), she did, and Buenos Aires became her new home.

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