Juan Belaieff

Juan Belaieff (; 19 April 1875 – 19 January 1957) was a Russian and Paraguayan explorer, cartographer and soldier, notable for his investigation and mapping of the Gran Chaco region and for his role as an officer in the Paraguayan army during the Chaco War.

Biography Juan Belaieff was born as Ivan Belyaev in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His father was a military officer from a noble family. Belaieff signed up with the Russian Army in 1892, and graduated from the in 1893. He participated in World War I and was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1915, and of a major-general in 1917. He was seriously wounded in 1916 and spent several months in a hospital.

When the Russian Civil War started in 1918, Belaieff joined the Volunteer Army under the command of Pyotr Wrangel. On March 25, 1920, he was evacuated from Novorossiysk to Gallipoli, and from there moved to Bulgaria and eventually in 1923 to Buenos Aires. He was interested in creating a Russian colony in South America. After failing to find enough support of the idea in Argentina, he moved in 1924 to Paraguay, where he was accepted to military service, and managed to relax the conditions for immigration of the former white movement officers who were accepted to Paraguayan military service as well. The Maká were hired as his guides and porters and Belaieff became interested in their language and culture, performing anthropological and ethnographic studies; Belaieff acquired such a deep understanding of the indigenous language that he was able to compile a dictionary.

Juan Belaieff died in Asunción on January 19, 1957. He belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. According to his will, after the memorial service his body was transported to the west bank of the Paraguay river, where the Gran Chaco region begins, and buried in a mausoleum inside a Maká reservation. After his death, Belaieff became a messianic deity for the Maká people.