Alicia Dussán de Reichel (16 October 1920 – 17 May 2023) was a Colombian educator, who was one of the first students of ethnology in the country. For two decades, she was the only woman conducting archaeological and anthropological studies in the country. Her research focused on Colombia and the Caribbean and along with her husband, she founded the University of the Andes' Department of Anthropology. She occupied Chair 15 of the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences until 2008 and was the only anthropologist to be a member during her tenure. In 2010, she was honored by the French Government with the designation of officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Early life
Alicia Dussán Maldonado was born on 16 October 1920 in Bogotá, Colombia, to Lucrecia Maldonado Parra and Agustín Dussán Quiroga. Her father was a landowner, originally from Villavieja and her mother was a passionate liberal nationalist, as her father, José María Maldonado Neira, had served as a General in the Thousand Days' War. Another ancestor from her Parra line was Antonio María Díaz, who had fought in the Battle of Boyacá. From the third grade, Dussán developed an interest in other cultures, particularly those of Africa and Asia, as well as a curiosity about Colombia's indigenous people.
Dussán attended the Gimnasio Femenino (Women's Gymnasium) in Bogotá, a prestigious private school which incorporated a Montessori method as well as moral instruction to prepare young women to become good wives and mothers. She was one of the first group of young women in Colombia who pursued higher education and a career. Dussán's father died before she completed high school. She graduated in 1938 and with the consent of her mother, decided to go to Europe to further her studies. She enrolled in the University of Berlin studying German Culture and Language and while she was in Europe took the opportunity to visit many museums, seeing for the first time archeological objects from South America. She was forced to return to Colombia at the outbreak of World War II. Dussán enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the National University of Colombia in 1940, but fascinated by archeology attended lectures offered by Paul Rivet. After studying law through 1941, she transferred to the National Ethnological Institute (NEI), which had recently been founded by Rivet. The program was an innovative approach to scientifically based methodology, rather than rote memorization. Students were encouraged to evaluate the biological, cultural and technological influences of indigenous peoples upon each other. Receiving her degree in 1942, the following year, Dussán married fellow student Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff.
Career
Between 1942 and 1945 Dussán worked as research assistant at NEI and jointly worked with her husband on an evaluation of funerary urns in the Magdalena Department and carried out a study on the physical anthropology of the Pijao people of the Tolima Department. During this period, she also gave birth to the couple's first child, René Reichel Dussán. She was awarded research grant to carry out studies in 1944 from the French government. Besides the difficulty of the physical work, Dussán had to face criticism from local priests and other members of society, who felt that her dress and behavior were inappropriate for a woman. For the first two decades of her career, she was the only woman working in anthropology in Colombia, and was ridiculed for not choosing a career as a social worker or nurse, if she insisted on working. Wearing pants, instead of the customary dresses for women at that time, and becoming one of the first women to drive a car resulted in people calling her a man and throwing stones at her.
In 1946, she co-founded with her husband the Ethnological Institute of Magdalena and worked there through 1950. Collecting ceramics and ethnographic materials, they established a museum of pieces they amassed during their joint archaeological fieldwork in an area they designated as Pueblito, which is now in the Tayrona National Natural Park, and the river valleys surrounding the Ranchería and Cesar Rivers. One particularly important ritual they documented was a practice of secondary burial among the Yuko or Yukpa people who lived in the northeastern part of the Cesar Department. Working on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Dussán who was pregnant again, collected materials from the local indigenous people on their mythology, socialization processes, and traditions. Using field questionnaires designed and adapted from Margaret Mead's methodology, she made pioneering studies on gender relations and parenting traditions in Taganga.