ABSTRACT
Although the term “youth subculture” coined at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies refers to cultures born after World War II and is mostly associated with teds, mods, skinheads, rockers, punks, and rude-boys, in the 1930s it was already possible to find the Mexican American youth culture of pachucos in the border area between the United States and Mexico. Like the first teds in Great Britain, as well as youth subcultures in different times and places, pachuco culture was criminalized in 1942 in Los Angeles and connected to the 1943 “zoot-suit riots.” Juvenile criminalization in the first half of the 20th century used representations of youth forged in the 19th century that were nurtured by adultism and constructions of pathology articulated to racism and the imposition of middle-class values on the poor (Finn, 2001; Mintz, 2004). In this framework underprivileged youngsters were (and still are) supposed to exhibit innate moral flaws and their symbols became targets of widespread hostile crowd behavior.
