La Boca Barrio

Today I went to La Boca barrio, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. First, you may be wondering why I went there and not to school on Monday. Because today was a national holiday celebrating General Jose de San Martin, the liberator of Chile and Peru from Spain in the 1800's, which helped solidify Argentina's Independence as well. So we had no school.

Back to La Boca. I went with Rhys, a young student from Wales and England whom I met at the language school these past two weeks. He has finished his time here (5 weeks for him) and this was his last day before returning to England, and next month beginning his law studies at Cambridge. We went to La Boca to take pictures of the brightly colored buildings and enjoy the art fair and Tango dancers in the street.

La Boca is the "Little Italy" of Buenos Aires - the place where the Italian and Portuguese immigrants settled. It was the working class barrio - filled with tanneries, meat packing plants, paint factories, etc. It was because the people used the left over paint from the factories that their houses became such a bright collage of color. La Boca was also the birthplace of Tango and of course is the home of the famous La Boca Juniors futbol club - the club that produced the great Diego Maradona. The community definitely has spirit for their soccer team, wherever you go you see "oro y azul" (gold and blue) (the team colors) as well as many shops that sell La Boca Juniors memorabilia.

La Boca is still a very rough neighborhood. At least according to the rumors, stories, and guidebooks. They tell tourists not to wander away from the tourist area and suggest you should not bring expensive cameras into the area (but it is such an interesting place that I had to take out my camera). They also say the police only patrol the tourist area during the daylight and then leave at sundown. It seemed safe enough to me, but we did follow the stories and took a taxi in and out of the tourist area, instead of trying to walk in from outside and passing through the regular neighborhood of La Boca. If you want to see pictures of the barrio or of the Tango dancers, follow these links to the Kodak Gallery Albums I created. This link goes to pictures of the neighborhood: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.ciq7wl0a&x=0&y=m7jvcc&localeid=en_US

This link takes you to pictures of Tango dancers in the street: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.470in80q&x=0&y=-7pah57&localeid=en_US