Caminito, Buenos Aires Poster

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. During the 1800s, a small stream flowing into the Riachuelo River ran along the same route where the Caminito is now found. Later that century, this area of the stream became known as the Puntin, the Genoese diminutive term for bridge (a small bridge allowed people to cross the stream here). When the stream dried up, tracks for the Ferrocarril Buenos Aires y Puerto de la Ensenada were installed at the site, and disused tracks remains at the end of Caminito, along Garibaldi Street. 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 Martín, an abandoned orphan who was adopted by a Genoese immigrant couple in La Boca, painstakingly prepared the walls facing the abandoned street, applying pastel colours 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. The artist was a personal friend of Argentine tango composer Juan de Dios Filiberto, who created a well-known 1926 tune by the same name.