Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 114
ultimate value creator, on a par with Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford,
Alexander Bell and other industrial titans of the early 20 th Century. He did for the tin
industry what the Guggenheim family did for copper, except that the latter didn’t keep
their sight focused in their native Switzerland, and therefore their empire became a
permanent American dynasty. Mr. Patino’s dynasty remained homeless and dwindled
away, its remnants now centered in Switzerland.
The ravages of the 1952 takeover of the mines were abating by 1968, and President
Barrientos was pushing to build a tin smelter in Bolivia. Heretofore tin had been
exported as ore and smelted in Europe, mostly in England. After Barrientos’ death the
plant was finally finished and activated. For the first time pure tin ingots were available
in the country in reliable industrial quantity and quality.
During the pre-Barrientos days the socialists did not brook dissent to their policies, but
risking their ire I engaged them in verbal contests on every occasion I found.
Receptions within the expatriate community and civic meetings were my usual
battlegrounds. I was always dismissed as a selfish cruel capitalist, an enemy of the
people. They thought that a dangerous creature such as me had to be carefully
watched. When Barrientos became president, they were mostly pushed out of
government power but certainly not out of Soviet favor. The intellectual war continued in
the same forums but now there was a little more opportunity to translate words into
action. I wanted to give my words practical value that would help both the community
and me. Inspired by my brother Chuso’s example in the bicycle business, I saw the
availability of pure tin as a great opportunity to develop an industry that would use it as
a raw material.
Thinking about Mr. Patino’s unappreciated legacy, I contacted a friend I had made after
my return to Cochabamba who was in the shoe business and had a very good
manufacturing experience. As a teenager from Croatia, Boris Zorotovic had arrived at
the mining town of Oruro with his parents, escaping the German invasion of the Balkans
during World War II. After his father’s death, he and his mother moved to Cochabamba
where he went to school and became integrated in the mainstream of the country. By
the time I met him, he was a high-level manager at the Bata Shoe Company of
Cochabamba.
He accepted my idea to find an industrial use for tin and agreed to a 50-50 partnership.
We sealed our understanding with a handshake in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where he was on
temporary duty. Boris and I, until his passing, never needed anything more than a
handshake to signify our commitments to each other. We commissioned CGL to
prepare a feasibility study and suggest machine purchase requirements. We learned
that by now plastics, aluminum, ball bearings and other materials had replaced tin for
the uses for which it had been so necessary before.
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