Globalizing the Americas Through Twentieth-Century Youth Organizations
The twentieth century saw an unprecedented rise in youth culture in the Americas through the proliferation of organizations that channeled their energy into politically, culturally, and socially constructive activities. Many political leaders saw such organizations as strategic vehicles for nation-building, and official sponsorship of youth organizations burgeoned alongside the emergence of populist-style politics in the region that spanned the ideological spectrum. The relationship between national political projects and organized youth cultures can be traced in a rough chronological sweep through the region in four sections. These include nationalism and race expressed in cultures of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides; neocolonial desires behind the pan-American youth exchanges of the Good Neighbor period; the ideological poles of populism in Peronist Argentina and Castro’s Cuba; and contestatory youth cultures in South American dictatorships during the late Cold War period. Over time and across countries, the intended state-sponsored political and social goals of organizing children and youth were often nuanced—if not completely undermined—by young people’s own plans as active members with goals of their own.