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PILAGÁ (Gran Chaco, Argentina)
The remarkable child sexuality in the Pilagá
(Argentine Gran Chaco) is to some extent studied by the Henries[1] in the 1940s; regrettingly, few
corroborating data exist. Reviewed (1945) and cited (1952:p540-1) by Róheim,
their work was praised to be “the best and most extensive field work done on
any group of children in a primitive society”, although clearly Róheim
regretted their self-admitted impotence in psychodynamic interpretation.
The reader is told that the children “pass
hours each day in violent sexual games […] in everyday life, there is a
constant veering between sexuality and violence, and often the two are
inextricably blended […] absolutely no prohibition is placed on child sexual
activity by the adults, so that the children are at liberty to do what they
please. Under such circumstances, the only limits to the child’s sexual
activity are his physiological capacities and the tolerance of his companions
([1944 [1974:p55-9, 72]; 1948 [1953:p296, 299])”. The games include attempts at
coitus (1949:p97). It must be said that the (spontaneously) genitalised dolls
may have triggered the sexual phenomena, since sexuality was “completely
absent when the girls played with their own dolls” (1944 [1974:p32]); also,
native doll use was impersonal rather than externally personalised. The
native sexual patterns, however, do not necessitate such explanation (ibid.):
“Young children are
permitted absolute freedom. The adult sexual act is performed at night but
without any attempt at concealment. Up to the age of five boys masturbate and
practice pederasty unashamedly in broad daylight. The girls masturbate
against one another in public, and at five years they start taking little
boys to bed with them and attempting coitus. Open masturbation by rubbing
against other children, games of snatching at genitalia, and open “coitus
bees” in which groups of little boys and girls attempt coitus at night,
continue until about the age of twelve. Children and adults joke constantly
about sex, and sexual insults by children are common”.
Their discussion of doll-facilitated sexual
phenomena ([1974:p72-9]) reveals that intercourse between the dolls was the
prime symptom. The piling up of dolls, which the authors include in the phenomenon
of “spreading” of sexuality, may, in some case, “be related to the habit
young Pilagá children have of piling one on top of the other in a frenzy of
masturbation”. Other positionings were significant for the “known
homosexuality of little boys”, including the example of anal penetration by a
four-year-old boy performed on a boy slightly junior his age.
Interestingly, the authors report a case of
what could have been considered problem sexual behaviour by the Pilagá (no
arguments are made in this respect) in an eight-year-old girl, who set out on
a “raping rampage” involving little girls (p77). This occurred in an apparent
identification with a maladjusted adolescent, who, according to local
believes, could be expected to
perform rape (being a “lunatic”).
Additional refs:
§
Henry, J. (1940) Some cultural determinants of
hostility in Pilagá indian children, Am
J Orthopsychia 10,1
§
Henry, J. (1947) Environment and symptom formation, Am J Orthopsychia, Oct.
§
Molina, A. I. (1978)
La expresión de lo erótico en la cultura Pilagá. Buenos Aires: CAEA
§
Molina, A. I. (1981) Sexualidad Pilagá en Publicaciones,
36
§
Molina, A. I. (2000) Cuerpo e identidad étnica y
social. Un análisis de las representaciones Pilagá, Boletín Antropológico 49:29-52 [http://vereda.saber.ula.ve/museo_arqueologico/publicaciones/boletin_49/cuerpo_identidad_etnica.pdf]
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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