Simón Iturri Patiño (1 June 1860 – 20 April 1947) was a

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

who was among the world's wealthiest people at the time of his death. With a fortune built from ownership of a majority of the

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

industry in Bolivia, Patiño was nicknamed "The Andean Rockefeller". During World War II, Patiño was believed to be one of the five wealthiest men in the world.

Biography

Patiño's biographers are not in agreement on the details of his early life. Many wrote that he was a

cholo ''Cholo'' () was a racial category used in 18th-century Spanish America to refer to people who were three-quarters Amerindians, Amerindian by descent and one-quarter Spanish people, Spanish. Its origin is a somewhat derogatory term for Multi ...

, with a mixed

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...

and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

heritage, and born to a poor mother, while his authorized biography holds that he was solely of European ancestry, and the son of a provincial leader. He was actually the illegitimate son of Julio Abasto and María Patiño from

Cochabamba Cochabamba (; ) is a city and municipality in central Bolivia in a valley in the Andes mountain range. It is the capital (political), capital of the Cochabamba Department and the list of cities in Bolivia, fourth largest city in Bolivia, with ...

. Before entering the mining industry, he either managed a store in

Oruro Oruro (Hispanicized spelling) or Uru Uru is a city in Bolivia with a population of 264,683 (2012 calculation), about halfway between La Paz and Sucre in the Altiplano, approximately above sea level. It is Bolivia's fifth-largest city by populat ...

, or spent years in private schools. Eventually, Patiño started in mining with Compañía Huanchaca de Bolivia, a silver company, and then with Fricke y Compañía. Patiño was assigned to collections for the store, and in 1894, he agreed to accept a deed of land in compromise for a $250 debt owed by a prospector. The deed turned out to be for the rocky side of a mountain, and Patiño was fired from his job for settling an account in exchange for a worthless piece of property. Legend has it that Patiño was forced to pay back the store from his own funds, and was stuck with his own bad bargain."World Tin King Richest Man of Latin-America", UPI report, 2 April 1931, in ''The Daily Courier'', (Connellsville, Pa.) The mountain, located near Llallagua, turned out to be richer in minerals than anyone had imagined. Although the first several years of work yielded little, the turning point came in 1900 when Patiño located a very rich

vein Veins () are blood vessels in the circulatory system of humans and most other animals that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are those of the pulmonary and feta ...

of tin, later called "''La Salvadora''" (The Savior). Over the next 10 years he built up the control of nearby mines and other important mines in Bolivia, including Catavi, Siglo XX, Uncia and

Huanuni Huanuni is a town in the department of Oruro, Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, ...

. By the 1920s he had also bought out

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

an interests in his mining company and went on to buy tin

smelters Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zinc. Sm ...

in England and Germany. By the 1940s he controlled the international tin market and was one of the wealthiest men in the world, hence his "title" ''The Tin King'' (''Rey del Estaño''). In his 2008 book "

Outliers In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter ar ...

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcast ''Revisionist ...

estimated the total net worth of Simon I. Patiño around US$81.2 billion in 2008 dollars. That amount placed him in number 26 of all-time wealthiest individuals in human history, ahead of

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

Carlos Slim Carlos Slim Helú (; born 28 January 1940) is a Mexican business oligarch, investor, and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world by ''Forbes'' business magazine. He derived his fortune from his e ...

Warren Buffett Warren Edward Buffett ( ; born August 30, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist who currently serves as the chairman and CEO of the conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his investment success, Buffett is ...

and

J.P. Morgan JP may refer to: Arts and media * ''JP'' (album), 2001, by American singer Jesse Powell * ''Jp'' (magazine), an American Jeep magazine * '' Jönköpings-Posten'', a Swedish newspaper * Judas Priest, an English heavy metal band * ''Jurassic Pa ...

. Patiño had been living between Europe and Bolivia since around 1912. In 1924, following a heart attack, his doctors told him not to return to Bolivia and he moved abroad permanently, first to Paris, then to New York and finally to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

where he died, close to the homeland he was so fond of and wanted so desperately to return to. While living in Paris he was appointed Minister to France and represented Bolivia in 1938 at the

Évian Conference The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin ...

. Previous to a political shift away from his allies in the government, Patiño had merged the company owning his Bolivian tin property with a British company active in Malaysia. Patiño died in 1947 and was buried in the province of Cochabamba, high in the Bolivian mountains of his birth, in a white mausoleum.

Family

Simón I. Patiño was married to Albina Rodriguez, with whom he had five children *René * Anténor *Graziella (married to Jorge Ortiz-Linares, a Bolivian diplomat of aristocratic Spanish descent, Ambassador of Bolivia to France during and after the Second World War, parents of George and

Jaime Jaime is a common Spanish and Portuguese male given name for Jacob (name), James (name), Jamie, or Jacques. In Occitania Jacobus became ''Jacome'' and later ''Jacme''. In east Spain, ''Jacme'' became ''Jaime'', in Aragon it became ''Chaime'', and i ...

) *Elena (married to José María López de Carrizosa y Martel, 3rd Marquess del Merito, Grandee of Spain) *Luz Mila (married to French Count Guy du Boisrouvray, parents of Albina du Boisrouvray, mother of François-Xavier Bagnoud who was killed in a helicopter accident during the Paris–Dakar Rally, together with the singer Daniel Balavoine).

Epilogue

The

Bolivian Revolution of 1952 The Bolivian Revolution of 1952 (), also known as the Revolution of '52, was a series of political demonstrations led by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), which, in alliance with liberals and communists, sought to overthrow the rulin ...

confiscated the ''Patiño Mines''. It is claimed that Patiño's son, Antenor Patiño, had a hand in the

military coup A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

that deposed the leader of that revolution, the then President

Víctor Paz Estenssoro Ángel Víctor Paz Estenssoro (2 October 1907 – 7 June 2001) was a Bolivian politician who served as the 45th president of Bolivia for three nonconsecutive and four total terms from 1952 to 1956, 1960 to 1964 and 1985 to 1989. He ran for pr ...

, in the 1960s.

Notes

References

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External links