Word: dolmatoff
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Anthropologist Reichel-Dolmatoff states that a Kogi woman at night lures her husband "to lie down in the fields, threatening to cut off the soup if he refuses [TIME, July 28]." He then explains the Kogi man's aversion to sex stems from a cult of love for a world-mother spirit...
...being reluctant to sex, the mama to whom I talked, professed interest and wonderment at my being one of the first white women he had ever seen. After cautiously inquiring if I was a wealthy widow, he promptly proposed. I did not stay long enough to disprove further Reichel-Dolmatoff's claims...
Kogi men, says Reichel-Dolmatoff, loathe sex and shrink from it, an attitude they learn as boys from priests who spend nine years in darkness studying the tribal rituals. The priests, called mamas, teach that women are evil-but a necessary evil, because they provide men with food. Thus embittered against women, boys are initiated into a reluctant sexual role by a 60 year-old hag, and then sent out to seek wives...
...Reichel-Dolmatoff, turning to psychiatry for an explanation of such behavior, says the Kogi man's aversion to sex stems from a cult of love for a world-mother spirit. Kogis think life is only a larger womb than the one from which they sprang, and death only a return to the womb of the great All-Mother. Their aim is to put themselves "in balance" with the All-Mother-mostly by idleness in the uterine universe...
...Reichel-Dolmatoff, a six-footer with a blond mustache, is justifiably proud of having gained the Kogis' confidence in four years of close association. Last week, after reporting to the foundation, he hurried back to the Santa Marta Mountains for further study and picture-taking among his short, black-eyed friends...