Genesis of Youth Cultures in Chile: Coléricos & Carlotos (1955–1964)

Abstract

This article examines the birth of youth cultures in Chile in the mid-1950s. Using biographical accounts and archival material together with theoretical, and historical analysis, it is proposed that these groups were shaped by the segmented cultural industry (especially the film industry), as much as by the labelling and press-induced moral panic. Consequently, it is believed that the ‘coléricos’ and the ‘carlotos’ are more than just youth subcultures or countercultures associated to a particular generation of middle-class men marked by the unequal impact of the modernizing transformations Chile experienced in the 1950s. Instead, it is stated that youth cultures arose as a hyperbole of social change as they synthesize the mutations that affected intergenerational relations and the concept of youth itself, shifting from the status of being single to just being young, based on practices that the adult society does not carry out, such as informal dating (pololeo), collaborative home parties (malones) and segregated film attendance (matinés).