The Real La Boca: Barrio of Solidarity

La Boca is a major sightseeing hot spot in Buenos Aires, but visitors rarely stay here at night. The ‘hit-and-run’ style tourism in the southern neighborhood causes some to write it off as a gimmicky tourist trap.

If you peak behind the colorful façades though, La Boca is one of Buenos Aires’ most authentic barrios and it has been for a long time.

Due to the area’s early influx of immigrants and isolation from the rest of the city, La Boca has a rich cultural history and a long track record of community solidarity, social anarchist politics and a lively arts scene.

At the end of the 19th century, La Boca was to Buenos Aires what Montmartre was to Paris — a sometimes seedy mecca for emerging immigrant artists, in their own little world apart from the city.

As early as 1877 the Cosmopolitan, Philharmonic Friendly Society of La Boca formed to promote the arts and subsequently theaters popped up all over the district. There were also a number of neighborhood publications in Spanish and Italian, including El Ancla, El Riachuelo, El Progreso de La Boca and El Naciónal, a publication that lasted until the 1940’s.

The Independent Republic of La Boca

In the 1880’s the zone seceded from Argentina and was briefly declared, ‘The Independent Republic of La Boca.’

AlfredoPalacios — Alfredo Palacios in 1961

A few versions circulate about how the revolt happened. The most popular narrative is that in 1882 young La Boca residents, tired of receiving low wages, liberated themselves and raised the Genoese flag of their homeland. Although the history books make it seem as if it was a rag-tag effort, then-President Julio A. Roca gathered his army and visited the site to lower the flag himself.

The lively politics didn’t stop the neighborhood’s growth, and millions of mostly European immigrants, many political exiles, would come through La Boca in the following years.

In 1904 La Boca elected Alfredo Palacios to the Argentine congress. He was the first socialist representative in all of Latin America. Palacios had a long and fruitful career lasting until 1965. He was behind the creation of many Argentine labor laws, especially concerning women and children.

La Boca Today

Today La Boca is still a neighborhood with many immigrants, mostly Bolivians, Paraguayans, Peruvians and some Arabs, Africans and artists from other parts of Latin America.

Some of La Boca’s homes are still conventillos (community style housing). As in nearby San Telmo, some of those are casas tomadas, or squats occupied by residents marginalized by their nationality, poverty and/or lack of education.

The brightly painted homes (themselves the result of a 1950’s effort to revive the district), the overpriced restaurants and sidewalk tango dancers in the neighborhood’s epicenter are just a photo-worthy part of the bigger picture.

The volunteer fire brigade of La Boca, founded in 1884, was the first to form in the country. Today the firefighters are still volunteers and are viewed as national heroes and the city’s quickest responders. La Boca is also home to one of the country’s first community radio stations, La Boca 90.1 FM, founded in 1986.

La Boca also enjoys some of the city’s best candombe groups and murgas (music and dance troops) highlighting the mark early Afro-Argentines left on the neighborhood.

Community gardens, with participation levels that wax and wane from season to season, are dotted on abandoned plots throughout the neighborhood.

“The real La Boca begins when the tourists go home, at around six p.m. or so,” says Laura Barroso, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood. “It’s full of tenements so everyone is always on the street — it’s like the patio of the neighborhood. People hang out in the street, eat in the street and everyone pretty much knows each other.”

If you’d like to check out La Boca on a safe and fun tour, see our walking and bike tours or get in touch via our contact form.

→ Check out the La Boca tours on our curated tour list

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La Boca & El Caminito

La Boca, the Buenos Aires’ neighborhood famed for its colorful houses, its tango and its soccer team, is the one spot that makes every visitor’s agenda.

The centerpiece is the cobblestone strip, El Caminito, or little walkway. The one-time railway route is lined with the bright facades that make La Boca postcard perfect.

Named for a 1926 tango song, the pedestrian lane features an outdoor fair where artists sell their wares and tango dancers prance along the sidewalk in between photo ops with tourists.

But there’s much more to La Boca than what meets the casual tourist’s eye. Like New York City’s Lower East Side and London’s East End, La Boca was the neighborhood where new immigrants first established themselves when they arrived in Buenos Aires.

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Due to safety issues, La Boca is the one neighborhood in Buenos Aires for which we strongly recommend a tour, either a full-day or half-day tour that includes La Boca and other famous spots such as Plaza de Mayo with our Irish friend, or if you’re adventurous, a full-day bike tour that include La Boca and Caminto.

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The neighborhood may derive its name from its location at ‘La Boca’ (the mouth) of the Riochuelo, as the Mantanza River is usually called.

The port-side barrio is an obvious point for boats to come ashore and historians say the Spanish first landed in La Boca as early as 1536.

During their early colonial expansion the colonizers housed African slaves in this area. After Argentina gained independence many of the freed stayed. With the arrival of the industrial revolution La Boca grew into a gritty shipyard area with meat curing plants and tanneries.

Xeneizes, Tango and Lunfardo

Mass settlement in La Boca began in 1830, with an influx of immigrants from Genoa, Italy. Coming from a port city, it was natural for the Genoese to settle along the Buenos Aires waterfront. There were so many Genoese in La Boca at that time that some say the name is a spin-off of the name Boccadasse, a neighborhood in Genoa.

The new arrivals constructed tenements made of scrap metal and painted the shacks with bright leftover marine paint to liven up the one-time wasteland.

Soon the Italians were joined by immigrants from Spain, France, England, Ireland, Eastern Europe and Greece and among others. The cross-cultural mix gave birth to tango, although the term wouldn’t be coined until the end of the 1890’s. Factory and port workers would gather to dance in the central halls of the tenements and vie to grab the attention of the few women available at the time.

La Boca also played a fundamental part in the creation of the Argentine slang, lunfardo. The vocabulary grew out of cocoliche, a mix of Italian dialects that immigrants used to communicate with each other. Even the barrio’s famous soccer team, La Boca Juniors are also called Los Xeneizes, derived from the word for ‘Genoese’ in the Italian dialect.

By the turn of the 19th century the area was the second most populated zone in Buenos Aires but the construction of a new port in Puerto Madero meant the shipping industry would move northward. As Argentina entered its golden era, residents moved further inland and La Boca began to decline.

La Boca’s Revival

A revival of El Caminito and La Boca in the 1950’s was led by artist, Quinquela Martín. The famed La Boca orphan was abandoned at birth, adopted and spent a good portion of his childhood in La Boca. After studying drawing at a La Boca night school, he ended up becoming one of Argentina’s most famous painters and a major neighborhood philanthropist.

After the General Roca railway train line, which ran through here shut down in 1954, Martín set to work to save the barrio. He gathered neighbors to paint the houses bright colors, emulating the early immigrants. The artists began to host outdoor theater here utilizing the colorful houses as part of the backdrop.

At the urging of Martín, in 1959 the city government officially declared the street El Caminito an open-air museum. It’s named in honor of Martín’s friend, Juan de Dios Filibrito, a former La Boca resident who co-authored the tango tune of the same name.

Safety in La Boca

As in most places where a popular tourist attraction sits in the middle of an economically disadvantaged neighborhood, La Boca can be dangerous for visitors who stray off the tourist path.

Most just see El Caminito, its the few surrounding streets and La Bombonera the stadium where Diego Maradona became ‘God’ for his fans.

For brave low-profile travelers who want to explore more of the neighborhood, there are many interesting sites here, just don’t carry anything you can’t afford to lose.

A nice way to explore a La Boca with relative anonymity is by bicycle or go for strength in numbers and take a tour.

If you are headed to La Boca at night to eat in one of its many cantinas such as the El Obrero steakhouse or to dance tango, the usual advice is to take a taxi or uber to and from your destination.

La Boca Safety Tips:

• Don’t carry anything you can’t afford to lose

• Be careful straying off the tourist path, which includes El Caminito and the few surrounding blocks.

• Don’t ever wear a River Plate shirt to La Boca — that’s the soccer team’s biggest rival and you’d be asking for trouble!

→ Do you need Travel Insurance for Argentina?

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Getting to La Boca:

–Subway: There is no subway to La Boca

–Bus lines:

20, 25, 29, 33, 46, 53, 64, 86, 129, 152, 159, 168, 195

Tours & Bike Rental:

→ Check the La Boca tours on our curated tour list

⇒ Check out all the La Boca Tours on Get Your Guide

San Telmo: The Barrio that Refuses to Sell Out

A resident and senior citizen in San Telmo, Buenos Aires admiring the view from his French balcony. — Not selling out: A life-long San Telmo resident at home

San Telmo vies with nearby La Boca for the title of ‘the barrio that birthed the tango.’

While the birthright of tango may boil down to a technicality, lively San Telmo remains a focal point of the city’s tango and art scenes.

Buenos Aires’ most historic neighborhood has narrow cobblestone streets lined with resplendent, often crumbling buildings, family-owned bakeries, antiquated hardware stores, and an eclectic mix of bars, cafes and restaurants.

Fearless kids play soccer on the streets between traffic, cumbia and tango music waft onto the sidewalks, young couples kiss in doorways and cats lounge in windowsills. If there’s a game on, the screams can be heard every time the neighborhood’s favorite soccer team, La Boca scores a goal.

‘The Republic of San Telmo’ is chaotic, sometimes dirty and at once touristy in parts, but it is the neighborhood that elicits the deepest and most enduring affection for those visitors who get hooked.

Buenos Aires’ Neighborhood of Immigrants

The historic San Telmo market near the center of the neighborhood — The San Telmo market is the neighborhood’s traditional place to pick up fresh fruit and vegetables, used clothing and knick knacks.

Named after the Patron Saint of seafarers, San Pedro González Telmo, this area has a long history as Buenos Aires’ most culturally diverse neighborhood. In the 17th-century it was home to laborers arriving from Spain and Italy and later thousands of Irish, Russians, Poles, Germans and freed African slaves.

The 19th-century architecture throughout the neighborhood reveals the brief period when this was one of Buenos Aires’ wealthier districts. Improved infrastructure including sewer lines and gas lights installed in 1852 attracted the well-to-do who built the mansions that can still be seen today.

When a yellow fever epidemic that claimed the lives of thousands broke out here in 1871, wealthy residents moved north to lower-risk areas such as Recoleta.

Left empty, San Telmo’s mansions were divided up and rented to new immigrants that arrived during intense periods of immigration that lasted until after World War II. Today, the neighborhood is still home to struggling immigrants in low-rent tenements, and even a few remaining squats, but many among the newcomers are European and American travelers as well as students and artisans from all over South America.

‘San Telmo Palermo’

A fancy dog hangs out in front of a new-age window display in the San Telmo neighborhood — A new vibe: San Telmo-Palermo

In recent years some residents have griped about what is described as the ‘Palermo-fication’ of San Telmo. The neighborhood of 26,000 residents is sprucing up in some areas — Latin America’s first five-star gay hotel has come and gone, as well sterile ice-cream chains, and boutique clothing shops that, it turns out, are still too high-priced for the neighborhood. A handful of ‘fashion sushi’ spots and ostentatious glass-paneled storefronts look out of place, but overall San Telmo stubbornly remains untamed.

One place where San Telmo’s transformation is welcome is the San Telmo Market where there is now a gourmet coffee-shop, french bakery and even a Pho joint.

Property prices for the historic buildings have skyrocketed in the last few years, but the neighborhood that claims to be the ‘refuge of friendship and happiness’ refuses to sell its soul.

Take a Tango Tour