There are two La Bocas. We had read about Disney La Boca — colorful, kitschy, and over-ridden with tourists. And we’d been warned about Dangerous La Boca — the area beyond Caminito Street where you’re likely to be mugged and robbed. Neither description inspired us to make a beeline to one of Buenos Aires’ oldest neighborhoods. But, we suspected neither portrayal was completely accurate. So we hopped in a taxi to see if we could uncover the real La Boca.

Named for its location at the mouth of the Riachuelo River on the southeast side of the city, La Boca was first home to upper class Argentines. When immigrants from Italy and Spain arrived in the early 1800s, the wealthy moved to the Recoleta and Palermo neighborhoods to avoid having to interact with the working class poor. Their large homes were converted to “conventillos” that rented rooms to immigrant families. As families became established, they built homes around the conventillos from cast-off ship building materials — planks, sheet metal and corrugated iron. They used bright leftover marine paint to cover the the metal siding, often switching colors when the first ran out.

The bright-colored buildings fell into decay when the shipbuilding and meatpacking industries left the area. But in the 1950s, a local artist named Quinquela Martin convinced locals to revive the old traditions by painting the buildings brightly again. Thus Calle Caminito was born: a three-block pedestrian street filled with colorfully painted buildings, paper-mache figures leaning from balconies, and open-air tango performances. Caminito is part performance-art gallery, part Latin Lego-land, and all spectacle.

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