Juan Materno Vásquez de León

{{Short description|Panamanian public speaker, lawyer and professor}}

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Juan Materno Vásquez de León (born September 14, 1927 in Nombre de Dios - died June 21, 1999) was a Panamanian public speaker, lawyer and professor.

His intellectual work was centered on defining the Nature of Being Panamanian.[http://www.binal.ac.pa/buscar/cldetalle.php?id=220&from=l Investigations of the Nature of Being Panamanian (A Theory of the Panamanian Nationality)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927181941/http://www.binal.ac.pa/buscar/cldetalle.php?id=220&from=l |date=2007-09-27 }} published in 1981 In more than 20 books, television and radio interviews throughout 30 years of public life Juan Materno Vásquez de León's closest definition of a Panamanian was given in the terms of "the Panamanian is that being that is neither black, neither white, neither cholo, neither indio; to the contrary, he is black, white, cholo and Indian."