Desórdenes y juegos de chapas en la plaza: estudiantes, espacio público y juventud (San Fernando, c.1870-c.1900)

The article analyzes the problem of the links between the formative process of all-boys education in public secondary schools during the nineteenth-century, the public sphere and aspects regarding the construction of collective juvenile identity within a local space. From a brief set of controversial events, examined through press, bibliography, memoirs and reports from educational and political authorities from San Fernando, the article discusses problems that express on a provincial scale, processes that are part of wider occurrences and that are related to the slow social process of recognizing youth as an actor in modern Chile.