Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 111
By 1896, still working at the Fricke store, Simon Patino bought half interest in Mr.
Oporto’s mine, which at more than 15,000 feet elevation, was situated on top of an
ominous mountain where howling winds, ice flows, and mudslides terrified all living
things. Nature allowed permanent residency only to rocks heavy enough not to be lifted
by the constant frigid gales that blew most of the year or could not be carried down by
the frightening frequent mudslides. Two years later Mr. Oporto had had enough of eking
out a miserable living in such an inhumanly harsh environment. At that altitude, even
breathing becomes a difficult task. Mr. Patino, now also in debt up to his eyeballs, risked
even more. He bought Oporto’s remaining half interest and moved to the mine himself.
Soon he also ran out of credit. As he was about to abandon his dream, his young bride,
who had stayed behind in Oruro, came to the mine with some $4,000 that she had
acquired by selling all her possessions, including pots and pans. On the verge of total
failure, late in 1899 they struck a vein of tin so pure that most people thought it was
silver.
Some miners at the time would have been discouraged by this event, for it was silver
that they preferred. Patino, however, though lacking formal education was a dreamer
who had kept himself informed about world affairs. He immediately saw the huge value
of his discovery and moved to develop it. After claim-jumpers sieged his camp and after
he defended it with live bullets and man-made avalanches, fought-off many legal
counter-claims and defended his possessions from other attacks about which books
have been written, Mr. Patino consolidated his ownership and transformed this area into
the world’s largest tin mining complex. Landlocked in one of the world’s remotest
mountains, he built dams, power plants, railroads, ore-processing mills with the latest
industrial technology, housing, schools, hospitals, and other support facilities. He was a
rare native son who worked his own discovery, rather than selling it for a quick gain.
The record shows that he declined to accept all of the many Chilean and English offers
he received to purchase the mine. In the midst of the paralyzing isolation of the mining
country, he educated himself in the arts and sciences of shaft and tunnel mining,
mineralogy, transportation, power generation, personnel management, law, finances,
politics and international relations. In the process he acquired an over-arching
understanding of the interrelationships of capital, labor and government that soon
allowed him to re-invigorate the sluggish Bolivian economy and later to form a global
empire.
As a preamble to understanding Mr. Patino’s work, it is important to remember that by
the 1780s Anglo-Chilean companies had achieved control of the large guano and salt
deposits lying in what is now northern Chile, which at the time was Bolivia’s littoral.
When Bolivia attempted to bring these companies’ under its laws, Chile declared war,
militarily invaded the territory and annexed it. This uneven conflagration, that also
involved Peru on Bolivia’s side, was won by Chile and is known as the War of the
Pacific. It was not legally ended until the peace treaty of 1904 by which time most of the
tin mines in inner Bolivia still belonged to Chilean companies and remained so after the
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