, he wrote in 1930, de Souza Reilly about the Boca, the district "Genovese" in Buenos Aires: As soon as we come to the Boca del Riachuelo, your five senses you will cry like a stationmaster ear: "Genoa! [...] The words, smells, tastes, in short, everything you will the impression painting, landscape, surface located in Genoa. A handful of colorful houses, the harbor full of boats, the Genoese dialect that resounded in the streets - and everywhere the unmistakable smell of hot porridge and cake ... It was be the old neighborhood of La Boca, a miniature Genoa, populated by painters and sailors, housewives and prostitutes, poets, vernacular and smugglers, dealers and composers of tango. A district alley: colorful and disturbing, both poor and prosperous, where immigration mainly peacefully Ligurian had imposed the use of Genoese dialect.
Everyone, with few exceptions, lived in "conventillos" of Boca, where five, six families each installed around the patio in a small room shared bathroom and kitchen. Claim, the bochensi today, these immigrants formed utopian communities where poverty was decent, and if ruled solidarity, friendship and absolute order. Painted and touched up with paint constantly of the boats, the houses of La Boca district gave the picturesque aspect to which it is written in the imaginary city of Buenos Aires as an exotic place, such as the small Genoa, where the old immigrants had imposed the modus vivendi of their homeland. In Boca a little 'gray-Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants still practice the cult of the memory of the Liguria district.
visiting the Genoese, the people of Boca says - with a little 'for complacency - tasty anecdotes on the industrious spirit, yes, but also of their rebel ancestors. Anticlerical Freemason convinced of faith, socialist and anarchist, collected in what is now the century-old mutual association "Liguria", these old Genoese made life more difficult for a pastor of the local church. In 1882, following a general strike, it seems that they had reached the point of raising the Genoa highest flag on the building of the district, declaring the birth of the Republic of Genoa Boca. " If the republic was short-lived, it also said that it left a deep impression marked by pride in a collective memory of their roots. A memory, that of the old Genoese Boca, which is not lost.
are still so many family stories that visitors today can pick up walking the streets of the neighborhood. Dotted with Italian words, and more often in terms of Genoa, these stories invariably begin with "barco" which descended from the grandparents (or parents), each determined to move from poverty to a moderate rise in society through the redemption of the work. But the soul of Boca is not only the pride of immigration industry: here, in fact, the epic dimension of social redemption is softened by two other key themes of the immigrant community creolization: painting and tango.
La Boca during the golden years (ie the second half of last century until the late 60's) is the bohemian district in which artists such as Alfredo Lazzari or Quinquela Martin - all strictly Italian origin - installed ribera their easels on or directly in the boats, contributing their works to the identity characteristic of the place. Del Tango, La Boca is one of the mythical places. This is because Tango expresses the melancholy of immigrants. And it is also because the alley provides the background for a dance suitable source brothel, and songs whose lyrics (letras) were written in Lunfardo, the slang of the underworld replete with Italian slang expressions, often Genoa. Until a few years ago, the tango was danced until dawn in pizzerias (cantinas) of Boca, including a portion of the weasel 'and a glass of wine. Today's tourists, however, must be content with a walk on Calle Caminito, dedicated to the famous tango bochense Filiberto.
Today open-air museum, fireplace and a favorite haunt of street artists Buenos Aires, where painters, dancers and tango bandoneon players compete for the attention of tourists. Make no mistake, the traveler today that Boca is not ready to scream in his face Genovese 'as it was in the '30s. For over two decades, the neighborhood is in a state of semi-abandonment. While the flood of black water of the Riachuelo river ran more surely, the carcasses of old boats in the harbor now accumulated unused. Many old abandoned bochensi conventillos to move uptown to Buenos Aires. Sure - they are simply waiting for better times - Boca l'anima Genoese remains. However, lies the visitor to find it, venturing into the memory size with patience, imagination collective that constantly transforms the present into the past and the past in the present. The find, the "small country" (country chica), stories of the descendants of the many Ligurian, who came to Argentina to "make America" \u200b\u200binvented a new way of thinking about Genoa. Beyond tourism marketing, Boca Genoese feeds voraciously the nostalgia of the local people. Like a beautiful and sad tango, it still gives the bochensi the privilege of poetic identity otherwise denied to a country in crisis.
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