León Cadogan

Born in Asunción to Australian immigrants from the New Australia colony, as a young man he worked on yerba mate production in Caaguazú, where he met Mbya communities. He learned their language and became the first non-Indigenous researcher allowed access to their ritual language and esoteric practices. His work 'Ayvu rapyta' (1959) gathers mythic texts of the Mbya of Guairá and is a worldwide reference on Guaraní worldview. He also compiled a Mbya-Guaraní/Spanish dictionary.