Santiago Genovés was a Spaniard who emigrated to Mexico at the age of 15, fleeing the Spanish Civil War, became an anthropologist and, together with his Norwegian colleague Thor Heyerdahl, designed a famous experiment called ‘recreational boat’.
Many understood that this was a sexual experiment, but the results were very different from what everyone imagined.
- Genoese has always had a particular interest in exploring human behavior.
- Particularly in the field of violence.
- It was violence that took him out of his native country and also what he found in November 1972.
- When the plane he was travelling on was hijacked by a radical group.
“No amount of experimentation can definitively prove that I am right; but can experience prove that I am wrong? Albert Einstein?
It was precisely this kidnapping that gave him the idea of conducting an experiment on sex and violence. In animals, sex and violence go hand in hand. The same thing will happen in humans, how do I prove it?
Two years before the kidnapping, Genovés, along with Thor Heyerdahl, embarked on a trip from Africa to America, in boats made with papyrus reeds, wanted to show that Africans could have arrived in America under the name Columbus.
The most important thing was not that, but to discover that life on the high seas is a perfect setting to observe human behavior in detail.
This experiment, as well as kidnapping, has finally shaped its intention to create a kind of laboratory to better understand human behavior, and proposed designing a scenario perfectly adapted to conflict.
It was also an experiment on sex, based on the assumption that human behavior, such as animal behavior, associates sex and violence.
What finally emerged was the idea of building a small boat, with minimal comfort and very little space, a group of volunteers would board and have to sail 101 days in a row, without the right to defect.
Genovés was in charge of the choice of people and did his best to make them incompatible with each other.
The small boat departed from the Canary Islands to Cozumel, Mexico. The volunteers were six women and four men.
Genovés gave women roles of authority in the process and relegated men to small tasks, he thought there would be greater pockets of friction.
The truth is that the press began to speculate on the experiment, since Genovés did not hand over details about what was proposed, hiding your objectives was essential to allow behaviors to emerge spontaneously.
However, the press has taken over this “human laboratory” as a fair experiment on sex.
Newspaper headlines were all kinds of perversions. They made sure Genoese walked in a bikini on the boat. They started calling it “the bac passion. “
In fact, the experience director expected very obvious sexual behavior, which is why he chose sexually attractive volunteers.
Once at sea, things did not go as planned by the creator of the pleasure raft experience.
Only one of the travelers began to show aggressive behavior: Santiago Genovés himself, who began to despair at the see that none of his hypotheses were proven, the volunteers, on the other hand, achieved a peaceful and harmonious coexistence.
Although there was sexual intercourse between some of the participants, the situation was far from a sexual experiment. What Genoese expected was not that sex to drive violence either.
That’s why he started to get very intolerant and came very upset to the port of destination.
Years later, the volunteers gathered to talk about the experience and discovered that everyone fantasized about Genoese’s murder, in fact, some have developed the ideal methods to achieve it, no one could bear it.
It became so authoritarian that it annoyed all the participants, so bonds of solidarity and friendship emerged between the volunteers that remained intact after the trip.
In fact, the design of this experiment wasn’t exactly the best. Similarly, this mechanical association of animal behavior with human behavior may not have been so valid.
It was such a unique experience that it inspired a film called “The Ferry”, in which this curious episode of anthropology was recounted.