Caminito

Caminito is a little street in La Boca, a neighbourhood, or "barrio" of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It retains a strong European flavour, with many of its early settlers being from the Italian city of Genoa.

History

The history of Caminito is basically as follows:
* Early 1800s onwards: a small stream flowing into the Riachuelo river ran along the same route where Caminito street is now found.
* Later that century, this area of the stream became known as "Puntin", the Genoese diminutive term for bridge, because a small bridge allowed people to cross the stream here.
* When the stream dried up, the General Roca railway to the provinces that ran past here (there are disused tracks at the end of Caminito, along Garibaldi street), a deviation from the track followed the dried-up riverbed, and was where train repairs were carried out.
* In 1954 the rail line was closed and the area where Caminito now is became a landfill and the neighbourhood's worst eyesore.
* Over the following three years, Argentine artist Benito Quinquela Martin, an abandoned orphan who was adopted by a Genoese immigrant couple in La Boca, painstakingly prepared the walls facing the abandoned street, applying pastel colors and, by 1960, having a stage put up at the southern end; the wooden-plank stage was replaced with a nearby theatre house in 1972. Quinquela Martin, who always maintained feeling he owed his neighbourhood the labor of love, died in 1977.

External links

* [http://atlasgeo.span.ch/fotw/flags/ar_boca.html A Flags of the World article about flags used in La Boca]
* [http://www.midnightsoret.com.ar/viajes/undia/boca102006/index.html Caminito Street in La Boca neighbourhood]