Primeras culturas juveniles en Chile: Pánico, malones, pololeo y matiné

Abstract

This work deals with the constitution of the first youth cultures in Chile which emerged during the second half of the 1950's. Through the analysis of oral sources -life histories-, documental, theoretical and historical, we claim that these groups were modelled as much by processes of active appropriation of an emergent and segmented cultural industry as by labelling and moral panic generated by the written press. At the same time, we believe that the genesis of these youth cultures -particularly the so called Carlotos- can seen as a metaphor of the unequal modernising transformations that took place in Chile in the middle of the last century. Consequently, we propose that these first signs of youth tribalization express the mutations that occurred in intergenerational relations as well as in the subjectivity of young people, passing in an extensive manner from the condition of being single to that of youth, due to specific differential spaces and practices in relation to adult society, including dating ("pololeo"), cooperative domestic celebrations ("malones") and segregated attendance at cinema showings ("matinés").