Bartomeu Melià

Born in Mallorca, he reached Paraguay in 1954 as a Jesuit priest and studied the Guaraní language and culture. A disciple and collaborator of León Cadogan, he taught at the Catholic University of Asunción and directed anthropological journals. He had to leave the country in 1976 after publicly denouncing the persecution of the Aché. He kept working with Guaraní peoples, in intercultural bilingual education and ethnohistory. He received Paraguayan citizenship in 2011 and the Bartolomé de las Casas Prize for defending Indigenous peoples and the Guaraní language.