Caminito

Touristic Hotspot in La Boca

Great picture of a taxi near CaminitoOne of Buenos Aires’ tourist hotspots, the colorful Caminito street in the barrio of La Boca has an unfortunate reputation for being commercial, touristy, tacky, tango-ey rubbish, labeled as such by locals and travel guides alike. However,  this small road and the immediate area around it do in fact have an interesting history and offer the opportunity to take some great photos, even if you have to push past several tourists to get the experience. Give Caminito a chance! You might just like it…

What does Caminito mean anyway?

Camino literally means ‘way’ or ‘walkway’ in English, and the -ito or -ita ending tagged onto Spanish nouns means little or small. And so Caminito is often translated as either ‘little walkway’, ‘little road’, ‘little path’, or ‘little street’.

All of these are correct. It is little. At less than 100 meters long, it was never going to win any awards for size, but then Buenos Aires claims to already has those in the bag – Avenida 9 de Julio for world’s widest street and Avenida Rivadavia for world’s longest. However, Caminito certainly makes up for its shortness with its amazing colors, and probably has won some kind of award before for greatest concentration of tourists per square meter. But there is more to this small street and tourist attraction than first meets the eye.

Caminito street and the ‘colorful’ history of La Boca

Around 6 million immigrants poured into Argentina between the years 1880 and 1930, in which time Buenos Aires quickly turned from small town to heaving city. About 50% of these people were Italian, and many of those were from the port town of Genoa, Italy. Genoa was a port, La Boca was a port… things seemed familiar, and so the Italian immigrants did not move far from the immediate area where they first stepped onto Argentine soil, the port of La Boca (which means ‘the mouth’, as in the mouth of the Riachuelo river).

What has all this got to do with colorful Caminito, you ask? Well, the majority of these Italian immigrants in La Boca worked in the port, just as they had done in Genoa. The Genoese proudly brought their unique identity to La Boca, and one of their old traditions was to paint the outside of their homes with the leftover paint from the shipyard – as nothing else was available or could be afforded.

Conventillo Housing

However, they took things one step further in La Boca, and actually built the houses almost completely from materials found or discarded in the shipyard. This was because of the huge population explosion due to the immigration at the turn of the 20th century – there just was not enough homes for all of the people in Buenos Aires.

The answer to this problem was conventillo (tenement / shared) housing. Conventillos were long houses with small rooms that opened out onto a central outdoor common patio. Whereas in somewhere like San Telmo, for example, conventillos were generally old converted mansions large houses, in La Boca they had to be more inventive. Here the conventillos were hastily constructed from scrap corrugated metal and wood from old ships, and to spruce them up a little, the façades, doors and windows were then decorated in the famous bright color combinations with the leftover paint from the port, that tradition brought from Genoa.

Caminito is not strictly ‘authentic’, but ‘representative’

The main accusation that Caminito’s detractors throw about is that it is not authentic – in its current form, the street does not date back to the turn of the 20th century when the real conventillos were first built and lived in.

Instead, 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 (you can see the 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 train line went out of action, and the area where Caminito now is became a landfill and a bit of an eyesore
  • But soon after, probably the most famous Argentine artist of all time came to the rescue…

Benito Quinquela Martin, The Architect of Caminito

By the late 1950s, La Boca had drastically changed from the turn of the 20th century – most of the colorful, ragtag conventillo housing that had been spread throughout most of the barrio had been pulled down, being replaced by dull houses and blocks of flats. But this was the very essence of La Boca being destroyed, its history, and not everybody was going to sit back and watch that happen.
Benito Quinquela Martín, an abandoned orphan who was adopted by a Genoese immigrant couple in La Boca, was the man to take action. He had become the most significant painter in Argentina, with his dramatic paintings of the port of La Boca, and achieved worldwide recognition. But as La Boca was his inspiration, and had provided him with family, friends and shelter after having been orphaned at an early age, he felt he owed the barrio something in return.

And so in 1959, Quinquela Martín and his artist friends created the street of Caminito, as a means of recreating the way old La Boca used to look – a reminder of where everyone had come from, not just in La Boca, but Buenos Aires, and Argentina, because this barrio and its port had been the gateway for many immigrants into this city and country (up until Puerto Madero & then Puerto Nuevo were built as replacements in the early 1900s), who then went on to make Buenos Aires and Argentina what they are today.

The World’s First Outdoor Pedestrian Museum

What Quinquela Martín did was to rescue bits and pieces of the original immigrant conventillos that were being torn down and replaced, and used them to create a concentrated conventillo community around this small street, in what is essentially an uninhabited open-air art and history exhibit, and officially the world’s first outdoor pedestrian museum.

And so Caminito is really a boiled-down representation of the old immigrant La Boca, and therefore, recreated by a master artist raised just around the corner, and so Caminito is actually a lot more authentic than most people will tell you.

It is still an exhibit, and so nobody actually lives in the Conventillos along Caminito. You will see washing lines strung between walls in the stereotypical Italian way, but they are just for show, and all part of Quinquela Martin’s intended work of art, which should be respected for acting as a reminder of this barrio and city’s immigrant roots.

Tango on Caminito street

You will probably notice a lot of Tango around when you visit Caminito, in the form of street performers, tango dancers and musicians, tango music drifting through the air from bars and restaurants, and tango souvenirs sold by the dozen in most of the shops, some of them situated inside the actual conventillos. Of course this may all seem a little tacky. And of course, it is! However, there is a reason why the Tango is associated with Caminito and La Boca.

Tango music was born in Buenos Aires in around 1870. However, it is still open to debate exactly where in Buenos Aires the tango originated from. Many say the arrabal (the suburbs / frontier between the city and the fields of the pampa) has the strongest claim. However, La Boca’s claim is up there with it, and also back in those days the arrabal would have started just south of La Boca, and so there was probably some crossover.

It is agreed that tango music first came out of the environment of immigrant-packed conventillo houses, where many different cultures and their respective types of music mixed in such close proximity, and from the melting pot of styles from around the world, tango music arose. It was on the outdoor patios in the center of the conventillos, where immigrants socialised together and played their musical instruments to each other after a hard day’s work, that this most probably occurred.
And so, as Caminito is representative of the old immigrant La Boca, it is also a representation of the genesis of Tango music that occurred at the same time here in history. And in keeping with the Italian tradition of the neighborhood, tango is full of passion, style, arrogance, showmanship, and feelings of nostalgia and longing (possibly for the Italian homeland). And of course, the lyrics are usually infused with lunfardo, the porteño slang dialect of Spanish corrupted with the Italian language and accent.

Caminito, more than just a ‘small walkway’

There is a little more to the naming of Caminito than it being a literal description of the small street. It also has a tango influence behind it.

The name Caminito was in fact first famous for a very popular 1926 Tango, by a famous La Boca musician and resident, Juan de Dios Filiberto. As the conventillos of La Boca were perhaps the true home of Tango, and the Caminito street was to be a representation of this, artist Benito Quinquela Martín felt it highly appropriate to name the street after a tango, and even better, one by a famous local resident. The name of the tango just so happened to also literally describe this very small street perfectly.

Another reason for the naming was that musician Filiberto had just fallen seriously ill at the time, and his good friend Quinquela Martín thought this homage to him would be the best way to try and cheer him up. These days, there is also a street in La Boca very close to Caminito that is named directly after Juan de Dios Filiberto, and of course, the lyrics to his tango song are also famously written on a plaque up on the first wall you see as you approach Caminito (although Filiberto only wrote the music, it was the Mendozan poet Gabino Coria Penaloza who added the words).

In and Around Caminito

You can do a little souvenir shopping the Feria de Caminito arts and crafts market, which starts at the front of Caminito and goes around in front of the Riachuelo river. Here you will find handmade crochet scarves and shawls, traditional mate gourds and bombillas (the metal straws used for drinking mate), jewellery and lots of other interesting craft pieces.

And if you work up a hunger after traipsing around Caminito and the feria, stop in at an authentic Italian Pizzeria nearby in La Boca – Banchero Pizzeria. The restaurant also happens to have been a favorite of Benito Quinquela Martín, the architect of Caminito, so it is a fitting end to the outing – and delicious too.

Location of Caminito street

Don Pedro de Mendoza, corner of Del Valle Iberlucea, La Boca

Reader interactions

28 Replies to “Caminito”

  1. As a tourist who has visited Caminito many times, I can assure you that this is the most complete and comprehensive explanation of Caminito that I’ve ever read. The writer nailed what Caminito really is. Caminito and La Boca may not have the glory and glamour that the rest of Buenos Aires enjoys, but it is certainly one of the most important chapters in the history of the city … it is what made Buenos Aires the great city it is today.

    Reply

  2. Wow, Francisco, I think that is the nicest comment I have ever received about this blog or one of my posts, I really appreciate it.
    I am glad that you feel I was able to put together a fairly complete explanation of Caminito…that was my aim, and it is great to get some positive feedback and agreement, because it takes a long time to write all this stuff 🙂

    Reply

    1. Nice writng. Your style is similar to the columnist Burt Wolf

      Reply

  3. Very interesting.
    Though I must admit that I really thought someone was living here: http://dwardu.info/stampi/casa_en_la_boca.jpg

    Reply

  4. Thanks Edward…however, I think the photo you linked to is just somewhere in La Boca, and not Caminito…which is one very short street in La Boca, and the main “tourist attraction” there.
    It was only Caminito that I said is “for show” with no one living there…not the whole of La Boca!

    Reply

  5. Wow. This has given me the urge to go to Buenos Aires. It looks freaking gorgeous. Gonna bookmark your site.
    (I AM a translator, but not from Spanish to English, so I was actually unable to guess what Caminito meant…)

    Reply

  6. Hi Lattegirl,
    Hope you can get to Buenos Aires soon…I’m sure you’ll enjoy it 🙂
    Thanks for the nice words…keep reading!
    Oh, and Happy Birthday!
    All the best,
    Alan

    Reply

  7. Thank you for your excellent blogs about Buenos Aires! They are the most thorough I’ve found and since I’m heading down there in March, I’m reading up as much as I can! Excellent writings!

    Reply

  8. Hey there!
    I´m Matias from Buenos Aires.
    Now i´m working at a turistic ranch in Patagonia (www.estanciacristina.com).
    I´ve been looking some explanation in english about CAMINITO, and this is actually the best.
    I´m going to print exactly as u wrote to give to my guests.
    thanks a lot!!

    Reply

  9. hi, I am andres, from argentina , bs as, and I have 15 years old.Ireally like this web site.I am doing an important inglish homework for mY school, and I want to thank you to help me with this.I know that my english is very bad , but I could understant everything, so I have to continue working…..
    goo lucky!!!!!!

    Reply

  10. […] September 2007 Caminito Posted by collingwoodtanguera under BA , Streets , Tango   I`ve seen a claim elsewhere on thethat Caminito deserves respect as the worlds first outdoor pedestrian museum. Maybe the claim has somemerit. […]

    Reply

  11. Dear Alan
    What a remarkable piece of clear writing. Concise and true to fact but with that dash of humour that makes you want to be there (or at least read on). Kudos!
    Yours truly,
    Albert Canil

    Reply

  12. […] Caminito is the main street of the area that is typically full of color, tango dancers, artists, and tourists with an excited trigger finger on their camera. The local artists spread their works of art across the streets to fill the lively outdoor market with displays and all kinds of fun. Each small door you pass opens up to an exciting world inside that offers every type of souvenir imaginable. On the weekends there is also the Feria de la Ribera, an arts and crafts market, set up outside. […]

    Reply

  13. Keep up the good work!!..
    very well done…
    well researched and presented.. the best I have seen!
    g

    Reply

  14. I from Buenos Aires Argentina and I not know that Caminito was big this big. i not know websites were it

    Reply

  15. Boa tarde a todos
    é com imença satisfação
    que lhes digo argentina é um lugar fantastico lugares em que me encantei muito foi caminito ,tigre,porto madeiro
    canal san isidro palhermo, praça de maio
    lugares que a tumulo de evita já mais vou me ewsqueçer

    Reply

  16. Argentina was my honeymoon trip:fantastic!
    la Boca: incredible! Coloured, bizarre and full of music..
    Gorgeous!

    Reply

  17. […] Caminito street and the ‘colorful’ history of La Boca […]

    Reply

  18. […] j’arrive au Caminito, je comprends ce qui attire les foules de touristes qui se baladent à mes côtés. Le quartier vit […]

    Reply

  19. […] composed by Juan de Dios Filiberto. Read more about the quaint and beautiful part of Buenos Aires HERE. Nicci Cencherle and Melanie […]

    Reply

  20. Hi
    Would you recommend Buenos Aires as a cool place to visit? It’s just some travel guides describe it as modern, cosmopolitan and developed city while others describe it as a dirty, 3rd world, crumbling crime infested wreck.

    Reply

    1. Hi Amna,
      Thanks for your comment. I think you’ll probably find that many other major cities around the world have been described by people in both ways. Usually the answer is somewhere between the two. I would say it is in this case. And like all major cities, there are rich and poor parts, clean and dirty parts, safe and dangerous parts, etc etc. Personally I would recommend visiting Buenos Aires, it has a fascinating history and culture, beautiful old cafes, happening nightlife, and the locals are fun.
      All the best,
      Alan

      Reply

  21. I visited Caminito today and heard of its stories from our tour guide. I found your article to share with friends I thought might be fascinated by the stories like I was. Usually, wikipedia gives enough summary, but your article DEFINITELY outdid wiki’s. You might consider filling up the wikipedia page if you wish.
    ¡Salud!

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the kind words Temi! Glad you enjoyed Caminito and our article on it. We hope it’s a good sign of the quality of the stories that our tour guides tell on our tours 😉
      We’ll take a look at the Wiki page soon and see if we can add anything!
      Saludos!
      Alan

      Reply

  22. Thanks for the article. Very comprehensive. I was wondering if you could help me track down an artist on caminito. He makes musicians out of wire men. I was there last year and purchased some as thought they were fabulous. However kicking myself I did not grab more, nor get a business card. I live in Perth Australia and just popping over is not so hard you see. Thanks in advance! Michelle

    Reply

    1. Hello Michelle,
      Thanks for your comment, we’re glad you liked the article. And sorry for the delay in replying, we only just noticed this.
      I know of the wire men sculptures on Caminito, however I don’t know the name of the artist nor have any contact details. Next time we are in the area on our own we will try to get some details. However that isn’t so often as usually we are there with clients and don’t have the time to check things like this. Sorry if it takes a while… please feel free to check back and ask for an update.
      All the best,
      Alan

      Reply

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