Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 113
even closer insight of this great man. Following World War I, Mr. Patino was one of the
wealthiest men on the planet, and therefore one of the most powerful. His decision to
trade with the western allies only was of great importance for the cause of freedom but,
in my view, historians have not given him the proper credit for such critical decision.
Tin became to the food industry almost as important an ingredient as agricultural
implements, for produce could not be canned and preserved without tin cans. Tin was
used in all sorts of industrial applications to manufacture machinery, engines, vehicles,
home appliances, plumbing systems and even consumer products such as pewter,
toothpaste tubes and buttons. Tin made the construction of large borehole weapons
possible, as well as axles for howitzers and other moving equipment where the heat of
friction needed to be abated. Mr. Patino provided it in the voracious quantities the world
demanded. His dream, constancy, ingenuity and dynamic energy made the production
of these improvements possible on a large scale. Here was a man who knew how to
serve liberty with his creations. The week after Christmas of 1926, he crowned his
financial achievements when the stock of Patino Mines Enterprises Consolidated, Inc.
(PMECI) began trading in the New York Stock Exchange. His tin empire circled the
earth from the U. S. to Europe, to Bolivia, to Malaysia. He is history’s only South
American sole-proprietor capable of listing a globe spanning organization in the world’s
main stock exchanges.
In what to me is an aberration, and a living expression of Bolivia’s frequent negative
reaction toward its outstanding citizens, he was treated by the authorities as a scourge
to his land of birth. During the socialist period of the 1950s and early ‘60s his name was
maligned everywhere. The official press constantly demonized him. School children
were taught he was bad. Even before the socialists, precursor governments abused his
patriotism by foisting onerous foreign exchange rules against him and other important
miners and by borrowing from him in times of need and then overtaxing him and paying
their debts with devaluated currency. In 1952 all his Bolivian investments were
nationalized. For the Bolivian leadership of the day, his sins were not to be a socialist, to
have uncommon vision and abilities and to understand business on an international
scale.
The taxes his companies paid provided much of the country’s revenue and his
businesses were Bolivia’s largest employers and consumers of other industrial goods.
Several times in his career he offered to invest in other productive enterprises that
would benefit the country but was turned down or given a chilly reception, in my opinion
to the detriment of the public. Yet, when Bolivia, in a dispute over potentially rich oilbearing
lands, went to war against neighboring Paraguay in the mid 1930s, it was Mr.
Patino who funded a good part of Bolivia’s military needs.
To me he was a genius, who showed by example how a little mountain boy from the
crevices of the Andes with a big dream could become, through his uncommon vision
and the dint of his hard work, one of the world’s most powerful men. He was the
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