León Cadogan
| León Cadogan | |
|---|---|
León Cadogan
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | León Cadogan |
| Born |
29 July 1899 Asunción, Paraguay |
| Died | 30 May 1973 (aged 73) Asunción, Paraguay |
| Occupation(s) | Anthropologist, Ethnologist |
León Cadogan (29 July 1899 – 30 May 1973) was a Paraguayan ethnologist who made significant contributions to the study of Guaraní language and culture.
León Cadogan was born in Asunción a few months after his Australian parents, John Cadogan (Welsh origin) and Rose Stone (Polish father and Irish mother) who previously used the name Rose Summerfield by her first marriage, came to Paraguay as part of a group of a few hundred people who migrated there in 1893 and 1894. Led by the mercurial and stridently racist William Lane, the group created New Australia (near the town of Coronel Oviedo), a utopian colony espousing socialism, teetotalism and the ethnocentrism that had already produced an official White Australia policy in their homeland. The New Australia colony soon collapsed in dissension, and its members obtained freehold land instead.
A fire in his parents' home in 1904 forced the Cadogan family to leave the colony. They settled in Villarrica, a town with a German-speaking population substantial enough to warrant a newspaper, Villarrica-Actual, that publishes in Spanish and German. Attending that city's German-language school, León, who had previously learned English, Spanish, and Guaraní, learned German as well.
He was 18 when he began working as a clerk for the cold-storage facilities of Swift & Co.'s slaughterhouse in the Zevallos Cué barrio of Asunción. Through a friendship struck up with the Frenchman Emile Lelieur, he learned French and gained the opportunity to read classic authors, to learn elementary mathematics and the use of logarithms.
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