To understand Buenos Aires' culture, focus on the city's historic favorite dance

Our taxi rolled to a stop at a grimy intersection in La Boca, which was good. Though the driver seemed to hear my Spanish as hilariously unintelligible, this was the hoped-for destination.

How to make a small start on figuring out what life's like in Buenos Aires? Ditch the tour bus, cruise ship, drive-by snapshots of disconnected details when possible. Maybe pick up a promising thread to follow into some larger tapestry.

That could begin in the Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita and much of Argentina's political innocence are interred. Or among the dismembered beef cattle at the Mercado de San Telmo, where Argentina's role in the world's cow economy can be engaged. Or at the Water and Sanitation History Museum, where a conversation about the state of public health in Buenos Aires could begin.

But the most promising thread, I decided, was the twisting Rio de la Plata. The river forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay, and it's the birthplace of tango, which both nations claim. Here at the mouth of the river, thousands of immigrant Italians, Poles, French, Germans and Spaniards arrived in the late 1800s, joining freed slaves and earlier arrivals to look for work on the docks of one of the world's busiest ports.

Most were single men, and the boarding houses where they lived along the narrow streets of the neighborhood were called the "convencito," a joking reference to the celibate life they led — except in the bars and bordellos. That's where a scandalous new fusion merged moves from dances like mazurkas, paso dobles and the African-derived candomble. Men often partnered to practice the intricate moves.

All of this was explained as we wandered through La Boca with our guide, the willowy Basak Evran, herself an émigré from Turkey who is also, we learned, a tango pro. Buenos Aires is still a magnet, she noted: "No one is an outsider here. You meet any kind of people with any kind of history."

The historic neighborhood she led us through was full of fragrant smoke from roasting asado steaks and the music of a bandoneon, a plaintive concertina. There was tango onstage at an open-air restaurant and lots of tango paintings, photos and trinkets.

That was performance tango (your hotel can sell you tickets) and a pandering version at that, all macho vamps and gaucho duds. It can be mesmerizing to watch, but for most natives it's somewhat beside the point. Back in the riverine hangouts of the late 1800s and in the hugely popular milonga tango clubs of Buenos Aires and Montevideo today, this dance is far less for onlookers than for the dancers themselves.

"For me, tango is more than a dance," Basak told us. "It's more than a hobby. It has to do with life here — it's the human condition. It really reflects economic, social and cultural happenings. I also dance other styles and for me, tango is the most democratic dance ever. Because it brings young and old, poor and rich together. Argentina has always had problems with democracy. Being such an anti-democratic country, having created such a democratic dance is paradoxical," she said.

She did not exaggerate.

I picked up on some of those cultural entanglements in the research literature we browsed on our way south — books like "Tango and the Political Economy of Passion" and journal articles like "The Tango Metaphor: The Essence of Argentina's National Identity."

Part of that identity is found not far from the more heavily visited streets: a block-long mural depicting the anguish of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Their decadeslong demonstrations are part protest and part a continuing witness to the fate of tens of thousands of their sons and daughters. They were political dissidents, or suspected dissidents, "disappeared" by Argentina's U.S.-backed military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. That was also a time when tango, along with any form of social gathering that might be a vehicle for opposition to the junta, was suppressed. "Tango is intellectual, and they didn't want people thinking," Basak surmised. "It is social, and that can be subversive."

Tango, we learned, responds to such cultural forces. Its traditional stylized male dominance — what one instructor who is part of the Tango Feminist Movement calls "a caricature of the patriarchy" — is shifting. First popularized in Europe nearly a century ago, tango is emphatically international now and less wedded to orthodoxy, with enthusiastic followers in Europe and Japan, and innovations such as Finnish Tango. There are also clubs, lessons and conferences here in Buenos Aires and in many other nations celebrating "Queer Tango."

Before our farewells, our guide Basak took us to two stores along Suipacha Street dedicated solely to shoes for tango. Buenos Aires has more than a dozen of those. Some tangueros are intently focused on fashion statements to decorate their moves on the dance floor. Others are more relaxed in dress, if not execution. We would see both variations, as things turned out.

Our plan was to see tango, the non-show kind, as discreetly appreciative observers. It is always transfixing to watch, however it's done. We could have joined in, of course, but that risked tourist humiliation: Don't cry for me, Argentina, but don't laugh at me, either! It takes months of practice to qualify even as a rank beginner. So our compromise was to take a private lesson from a teacher, Joseph Foley, who would also steer us to the tango places called milongas and interpret the scene.

As you may surmise from his name, Foley is also an expat, who fell for the dance on his first visit to Buenos Aires. "I came from the U.K., where no one danced with any kind of technique except jumping up and down," he told us. And to see people of all ages, from their 20s to their 90s, in the same place, dancing these steps that people had been doing for generations, it was incredible."

So he took classes over months that eventually allowed him the same shared pleasure. As for us, we spent an hour and the results were modest, more tanglefoot than tango, but gratifying.

This was a milonga, a tango event. These gatherings aren't in a fixed place, like a club, but move around. They pop up and disappear. Sponsors organize one to make a little money, then relocate if the rent's too high or something else comes up. But they're not hard to find. On one recent Friday, 27 of these occasions were listed on the milonga app on my phone, and there are just about that many every night.

Our next milonga was at a historic Italian social club — every national immigrant group had its centro, including the Armenians. This was a dressier, more formal scene, but just as lighthearted. George Bernard Shaw may have said that dancing is "a vertical expression of a horizontal desire," but it was apparent at both milongas that romance is a theme only for some. These aren't pickup joints for Tinder trysts. It's more about the dancing, and whatever comes of it.

Invitations to dance are oblique — offered, accepted or declined with a raised eyebrow or a questioning glance, so no one's enthusiasm or disappointment is much exposed. Couples dance for a set of three songs, typically, and then either continue the conversation or part ways. Some dance nearly every night, Foley said. He meets many internationals who visit Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks, tango every night, and then fly home, year after year.

We closed out our Buenos Aires visit with a half-day walking food tour, led by a late-20s "Porteño" — the nickname for natives. A poised professional, she introduced us to local favorites at neighborhood bistros — choripan, a chorizo hot dog in a crusty bun; a barbecued provolone cheese dish called a provoleta; a corn empanada called humita; and of course a slab of steak with chimichurri sauce.

As things relaxed, she mentioned that she had been part of an international tango tour — by now, we were only mildly surprised — but that despite the excitement, constant travel had been wearing. She confided indefinite plans for marriage to a physician boyfriend, and the prospect of children. Finally, we traded ideas about how young families are affected by events on Argentina's unstable political and economic horizons. And when I asked about how the national future seems, she paused, looked off, and wiped away tears.

Stephen Nash is a visiting senior research scholar at the University of Richmond (Va.). He is the author of "Grand Canyon for Sale: Public Lands Versus Private Interests in the Era of Climate Change."