Today we rode the bus over to Boca, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires, to see their teams stadium and walk around a cool part of the neighborhood. When we got off the bus we walked straight over to Boca Jr’s stadium, the club that plays in Boca and many living near there root for. Boca Jr’s is one of the biggest and most famous clubs in Argentina’s history of football. They have won the Argentine league multiple times and boast some of the greatest football players of all time, like Diego Maradona.

As we were walking towards the stadium everything from peoples clothing to the buildings appeared to be blue and yellow, Boca Jr’s colors. When we reached the stadium we had half an hour to walk around their museum where they had video’s of great moments in their history, the trophies the team had won, and the best players to play in a Boca Jr’s uniform. After this we went on a tour of their stadium. You could feel the passion the tour guide had for Boca Jr’s and could see what this soccer team means to people in things even like the design of their stadium. The away team’s locker room is right underneath one of the rowdiest sections of the stadium, so before the game and during half time this section ensures they’re as loud as they can be as they jump around to annoy the opposing team underneath them. The tour guide was also telling us that the away section is at the highest level of the stadium, only has one bathroom for the 3000 fans it can fit and has no concessions to sell food to the fans. It’s crazy to see how the passion for football runs so deep in the Argentine people veins that they go to such lengths to help their team win. (Boca Jr’s stadium)

After the stadium tour we walked to the part of Boca that has shops. There we got lunch and looked around the different shops that were there. The buildings there seemed much older than the other places we had walked around so it was nice to see a different side of the city and it’s history compared to the areas right around our hotel. (old houses in the Boca neighborhood)

ESMA used to be an Argentine Navy school which doubled as a torture and detention center during Argentina’s last military dictatorship from 1976 through 1983. This time was known as the “dirty wars” and over these years an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared by the government. The people taking the others were far right-wing people associated with the government. They were taking, or “disappearing” as they were calling it here, left wing people associated with socialism, and torturing them to get information of more people who were associated with socialism. Eventually a majority of the people who were disappeared were killed.

Visiting ESMA you could feel the sadness and overall emotion associated with a cite where people were senselessly tortured and killed. Seeing the places where they were kept and how it was really in the middle of a giant city like Buenos Aires is shocking to say the least. Also the fact that everyone from the students to the officers at the naval school were forced to participate in the torturing of people makes it all the more real. On top of that other workers at the school must have felt gigantic dilemmas as they were seeing unfair treatment and torture of civilians like themselves at a government agency they work at. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation like this just because you would never really expect that it happened a little over thirty years ago in the same huge city that I am walking around today.