La Boca (Argentina)

Boca Juniors Soccer Club, La Boca city district

Last modified: 2001-10-24 by antonio martins
Keywords: la boca | boca juniors | club atlético boca juniors | república de boca | buenos aires | soccer | sweden | harbour | immigrant | genoa |
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• Presentation of La Boca
• Club Atlético Boca Juniors
• República de Boca, 1882
• República de Boca, now

• Argentina
• Buenos Aires city

La Boca is a district of the city of Buenos Aires located near the mouth of Rio de la Plata. It has been in the past the first place of landing for the immigrants coming from Europe, mostly Italians. Lot of them settled there. La Boca is now an abandoned port due to silt up and industrial pollution.
Ivan Sache, 15 Jun 1998

The district of La Boca, as such, doesn’t have a flag of its own; no Buenos Aires district has one (we’re just starting with provincial flags, after all...). However, considering that the [soccer] club Boca Juniors is based on La Boca, when it wins matches (...) the whole neighbourhood rises up in flags with the Boca Juniors colors [blue and yellow].
Luis Havas, transl. by António Martins, 16 Mar 2000

The blue-yellow-blue horizontal tribar, a flag created in 1905 for the Boca Juniors soccer club, one one of the main Soccer clubs in Argentina — it is still a sports flag only, note, and not at all an official district flag, even if it may be used by local tiffosi to show general allegience to the distrcit of Boca.
António Martins, 21 Jun 2000

According to my memory, when the football club was founded, they disagreed as to the club colours, so they agreed to watch the harbour and take the flag colours of the first foreign ship coming in. It was swedish.
Knut A. Berg, 16 Jun 1998

It should be noted also that, thanks to the efforts of Guatemala-based argentine vexillologist Luis Havas, it is known exactly which swedish ship accidentally passing by the Buenos Aires harbour that morning of 1905.03.23 (the club was officially founded in 1905.04.03) inspired the colors of this flag: it was the 4146 ton freighter Drottning Sophia, sailing from Copenhagen.
António Martins, 21 Jun 2000

• Argentine sport flags

«It is a large genoese neighborhood, but not of nowadays Genoa... rather a picturesque, special neighborhood, dynamic during the day and desert at nightfall, and full of the local flavour of the old sailing Genoa, with all the quaint and undeletable traditions of its ancient harbour.»

That’s how a traveller discribed the Buenos Aires district of La Boca in the late 19th century. Traditional concentration center of a large part of the genoese immigrants, La Boca had gained unmistakable traits, with its colorful wooden houses and metal roofs, with its shops and restaurants. It was really a “country” inside Buenos Aires city.

And that specifity was near to trigger a true “secession” in 1882, when, after a restless strike, a meeting was held at the local Italian Society where, among the general applause, was decided that «the argentine government cannot interfere in the affairs of the genoese». Next step was to hoist in a nearby pole the flag of Genoa, and to write down a solemn declaration with which it was informed to the italian king that has just been created the Independent Republic of La Boca.

This insolit episode had an unexpected ending. With it’s usual boldness, the argentine president, general Roca, proceeded personaly to the seaside district and tear down with his own hands the flag of the rebels, whom he harshly scolded. The next morning, the genoese gave their answer to the high deputee; a local street was renamed "Calle Julio A. Roca".

The blue-yellow-blue flag couldn’t have been the original flag hoisted by the independentists and tore down personally by the argentine president in 1882, as it was created 23 years later.
António Martins, 21 Jun 2000

The inhabitants have created an unofficial “República de La Boca” to preserve their cultural heritage. The official building of the Republic is an abandoned Italian bank. The entrance is flanked with two Argentine and Genoese (red St George’s cross on a white field) flags to remind the Genoese origins of many inhabitants of La Boca. Genoese dialect is still the most spoken language there. (Source: TV-magazine Thalassa (French channel France 3)
Ivan Sache, 15 Jun 1998

But that, by virtue of being the local club’s flag, the blue-yellow-blue flag is the one most connected currently with the district and it’s peculiar character consusbtantiated in the still-used nick name of “republic”, that I am also quite sure.
António Martins, 21 Jun 2000