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Also featured: Siriono;
®Mataco
Tschopik (1951:p167)[1]writes: “Owing to sleeping
arrangements within the Aymara household, children
are, moreover, aware of adult sexuality from early childhood, and it is not
surprising in view of the lax attitudes towards sexual behavior
that they themselves should experiment freely as soon as they are so
inclined. As a consequence, both boys and girls have had first-hand
experience and are thoroughly familiar with sex long before they have reached
puberty. It seems unnecessary, therefore, to point out that in this society
no importance whatever is attached to virginity”.
“The sex play of young
children is viewed by adults with tolerant amusement, and masturbation,
though ridiculed, is not actively disapproved, with the result that
informants recall having practiced it with no apparent feelings of guilt or
shame. Attempts at heterosexual activity on the part of children are,
generally speaking, ignored, and if noted tend to evoke amusement or mild
ridicule on the part of adults”. […] “As adolescence approaches, girls are
often admonished by their mothers not to have “too many” love
affairs, but maternal advice in regard to affairs of the heart is
customarily elastic and vague. In few instances do illegitimate children
constitute a bar to the marriageability of their
unwed mothers. Boys are merely warned not to make
girls pregnant, lest they become involved with some undesirable and
unscrupulous woman who might have serious matrimonial intentions. Evidence
furnished by life histories indicates that in not a few instances girls or
women take the initiative in making sexual advances, and, indeed, it is the
opinion of some Aymara that women are more ardent
than men” (p167a-b).
La
Barre (1948:p126)[2] agrees that under the given circumstances, (“As far as the facts of
procreation are concerned, no attempt is made to preserve children from a
knowledge of them; the entire family sleeps together on one bed on the raised
mud platform in the one-room native hut. No excessive care for privacy is
exercised in any case […]”), “Aymara children are
aware of genital sexuality from earliest childhood”. Nevertheless, they
have an expression for coitarche: lliukattatha.
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin:
Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology
Last
revised: Sept 2004
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