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http://www.fineartphotoblog.com/architecture/la-boca-buenos-aires-argentina http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/south-america/argentina/buenos-aires/ http://www.yendor.com/vanished/detention/map.html La Boca is located at 35⁰S, 58⁰W. La Boca is an Italian enclave located in southeast Buenos Aires, Argentina, near its port. La Boca sits at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. What is an ethnic enclave? “An ethnic enclave is a neighborhood, district, or suburb which retains some cultural distinction from a larger, surrounding area. Usually the enclave revolves around businesses that are run by the group of people who live in the neighborhood.” There is a saying in Argentina: “Mexicans descended from the Aztecs. Peruvians descended from the Incas. But we descended from boats.” The ancestors of about 95 percent of Argentina’s population came by boat from Europe, mostly from Italy and Spain. All photos without URLs are by Glenda Sullivan. La Boca’s brightly painted houses form a kaleidoscope of color on its cobblestone streets. Early Italian inhabitants were poor and worked in the nearby port. They used paint left from painting boats to paint their houses. There was never enough paint to paint one house in all one color; therefore, they became multicolored. Six million foreign immigrants came to Argentina between 1880-1930. About half were Italian and they came from the port town of Genoa, Italy. La Boca was a port familiar to them so they did not move far from where they first stepped ashore. Italian immigrants constructed their houses from scrap corrugated metal and wood from the shipyard. To spruce them up, the facades, doors, and windows were decorated in bright colors from leftover paint in the port. La Boca is the oldest, most authentic and colorful neighborhood in Buenos Aires. It has been described as a “country” inside the city of Buenos Aires. The immigrants socialized on outdoor patios in the center of the tenement/shared houses. They played their musical instruments to each other after a hard day’s work in the shipyards, warehouses and meat packing plants. Tango music was born around 1870 in Buenos Aires. It is debated where it actually began in the city. La Boca claims it started in this neighborhood. Tango music first came out of the immigrant environment—packed tenement houses where many different cultures and types of music mixed in close proximity. From this melting pot of styles around the world, tango music arose. http://www.buenostours.com/caminito Caminito means walkway in English, so caminito is often translated to mean “little walk way, little path, little road or little street”. http://www.buenostours.com/caminito Caminito is La Boca’s most famous street, named after a popular tango song Today tango artists perform in La Boca. There are many tango clubs, little tourist shops, Italian taverns and restaurants. Tango dancers perform in the streets of La Boca while tango music drifts through the air from bars and restaurants. Soccer is a very popular sport in Argentina. The La Boca Junior Soccer Club, one of the most important clubs in Buenos Aires, is based in La Boca. Today La Boca is partly an artist colony, but mostly a working class neighborhood. Genoese dialect is still the spoken language of the older generation, but most of the young people speak only Spanish. http://www.panoramasource.com/gallery-la-boca-ship-panorama-1.php The port at La Boca is now abandoned due to silt up and industrial pollution. The following slides are sample DOK test items for this lesson. What is the one unique, identifying characteristic in La Boca not usually seen in other ethnic enclaves? A. Buildings are old. B. Multicolored houses are plentiful. C. Tenement/shared family houses are common. D. Cobblestone streets are well maintained. Finding a common language, race, music and dance, customs and shared history is most necessary when identifying which of the following? A. ethnic enclaves B. world religions C. government systems D. economic indicators What is the name of the dance, popular in La Boca and throughout Argentina, which is illustrated here? A. square dance B. waltz C. fox trot D. tango Demographics of Argentina in the 21st Century Ancestry of Descendents Spanish Italians Welsh German & Swiss French Syrian & Lebanese Sweden, Norway & Denmark English & Irish Polish, Hungarian & Romanian Greece Portuguese Russian, Ukrainian & Lithuanian Croatian & Slovenia Serbia Armenian Mestizo Indigenous Indians Location Where Descendents Live All provinces Buenos Aires Patagonian Chubut Valley Cordoba province, Patagonian region Buenos Aires city and province Urban areas Buenos Aires and Patagonian region Buenos Aires and Patagonian region Buenos Aires city and province Buenos Aires and Santa Fe province Buenos Aires city and province Buenos Aires city and province Buenos Aires Chaco Province Patagonian Chubut Valley All provinces Provinces in north, northwest & south What conclusion can be drawn from the information in this chart? A. The Patagonia is the most populated region in Argentina. B. Descendents from Scandinavia live in all provinces of Argentina. C. Argentines are a mixture of diverse national and ethnic groups. D. The indigenous Argentine population is almost extinct.