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Fondation Simón I. Patiño

Eleven years after the death of Bolivian mining magnate Simón Iturri Patiño, Patiño’s heirs founded the Fondation Simón I. Patiño in 1958. The foundation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, promotes and funds programs related to South America, especially Bolivia, giving preference to projects in the fields of education, culture, research, health, hygiene, nutrition, agriculture, and ecology. Many of its programs are carried out from the Bolivian properties of the Fondation Universitaire Simón I. Patiño (Simón I. Patiño university foundation), which Patiño created in 1931. Other activities, particularly those related to culture, ecology, and literary publication, are centered in Europe.

The two foundations’ programs build upon the work initiated by Patiño himself, who established his university foundation to rectify the lack of technological and managerial expertise in Bolivia. Patiño never had the opportunity to obtain university training, but he recognized his country’s tremendous need for such education. He worked to set up the foundation with Belgian educator Georges Rouma, who had been training teachers in the normal school at Sucre, Bolivia. Patiño chose the university foundation’s motto: “Love for the work and respect for the law.” The organization provided scholarships for students to attend foreign institutions, funds for Bolivian universities, and cultural and scientific prizes in Bolivia.

In the twenty-first century, the Fondation Simón I. Patiño pursues its activities in several locations. The Simón I. Patiño Pedagogical and Cultural Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosts meetings for the discussion of teaching and of general Bolivian problems and also promotes reading through a network of libraries. The Simón I. Patiño Space in La Paz, Bolivia, is a meeting place for artists and intellectuals and a center for expositions of photography, design, and painting. The Albina R. de Patiño Pediatric Center in Cochabamba provides medical training and treats Bolivian orphans. The Pairumani Center of Fito-Ecogenetic Research is a genetic seed bank for highland food crops located in the department of Cochabamba, which is also the site of both the Pairumani Model Farm, which works to improve Bolivian livestock and develop seeds for the Fito-Ecogenetic Center, and of the Pairumani Seed Center, which sells the center’s seeds. The Simón I. Patiño Center of Applied Ecology in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, tests environmental models. The University Center in Geneva, Switzerland, provides executive training for Bolivian university students, and the Editorial Patiño, also in Geneva, publishes works in indigenous languages and translations from Spanish into French of literary and artistic works.

Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy

Simón Iturri Patiño

by Kendall W. Brown

Bolivian tin mining magnate and businessman

Patiño mined Bolivian tin, laying the foundation of one of the twentieth century’s greatest fortunes and eventually becoming the dominant force in world tin production. He presided over the international tin cartel of the 1930’s.

Sources of wealth: Mining; metals refining; banking

Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children; charity

Early Life

Simón Iturri Patiño (see-MOHN ee-TUHR-ree pah-TEEN-yoh) was born on June 1, 1860, in the village of Santiváñez, in the department of Cochabamba, Bolivia. The details of his youth are cloudy, although most accounts say that his parents, Eugenio Iturri and María Patiño, were of indigenous and Basque descent. He attended elementary school in the village and then moved with his mother to Cochabamba, where he received his secondary education in a Catholic seminary.

Seeking employment, Patiño left Cochabamba and moved to Oruro in the late 1870’s to work for a company that supplied imported goods for the nearby silver mines. In 1884, he obtained a clerical position in the Huanchaca Company of Bolivia, a large silver mining enterprise, which gave him important experience in the operations of the mining industry. He then took a position with the Fricke Company, a German business that supplied machinery and working capital to miners and bought ore from them. By the mid-1890’s, Patiño had gained broad experience in most aspects of mining. On May 1, 1889, he married Albina Rodríguez Ocampo of Oruro, with whom he had five children: René, Antenor, Graziella, Luz Mila, and Elena.

First Ventures

In 1895, Patiño formed a partnership with Sergio Oporto, who had been working the small, four-hectare mining claim of La Salvadora, located southeast of Oruro and at an elevation of twelve thousand feet on Espíritu Santo mountain. Larger claims were already being worked profitably for silver and tin nearby at Uncía by John Minchin and at Llallagua by Pastor Sainz. Discouraged by La Salvadora’s lack of success, Oporto sold his share of the mine to Patiño on August 26, 1897. At that point, Patiño left Fricke and went to the mine to direct its operations.

In early 1900, Patiño’s workers struck an extremely rich vein of tin, the exploitation of which laid the foundation of Patiño’s fortune. He immediately hired an engineer to manage La Salvadora and set about acquiring financing for machinery in order to modernize operations, meanwhile working furiously to fend off lawsuits and attempted invasions of the mine by Sainz and Minchin. With funds from international lenders, he built a refining mill to concentrate his ore and thus reduce the cost of shipping it out for smelting. By 1905, he had become Bolivia’s largest tin producer. Five years later, he purchased Minchin’s holdings at Uncía. Additional purchases of tin mines elsewhere in Bolivia expanded his holdings. Primitive transportation infrastructure had initially forced Patiño to ship out his ore by llama and mule. He built cart roads, and from 1911 to 1921 he financed and constructed a railroad that connected the mines with Oruro and the La Paz-Antofagasta line.

Mature Wealth

Not satisfied with being the largest producer of tin ore in Bolivia, Patiño moved toward further expansion by acquiring ore deposits in other countries and, more important, by increasing his holdings in the smelting business. One of Patiño’s competitive challenges was that mining costs in Bolivia were higher than in the Southeast Asian and African tin fields. In the Andes mountains, tin was mined underground and at high altitude, compared to Malaysia, where the metal could be dredged or extracted from open pits. The transportation costs of hauling ore down from the mountains to the coast were also expensive. Patiño kept workers’ wages low at his Bolivian mines, and he also bought shares in Malaysian and African ore fields.

The smelting or refining of his ore also presented challenges for Patiño. Heating the ore required great amounts of energy, but fuel was scarce in Bolivia. Patiño consequently had to ship his ore out of the country for smelting. He established processes to concentrate the ore in order to remove as much of the dross as possible so that only profitable tin ore was exported. Patiño also began investing in European tin smelters. His early relationship with the Fricke company of Germany led him initially to associate with the German smelting company of Zinnwerke-Wilhelmsburg. However, Patiño astutely broke with the German smelters at the outbreak of World War I, shifting his ore to Williams, Harvey & Company, Ltd., of Liverpool, England, which was the largest European tin smelter. He later joined forces with Edward J. Cornish of the American-based National Lead Company, a large consumer of tin, to press Williams, Harvey to allow Patiño and Cornish to buy a share of the British company. Patiño and Cornish threatened to build their own smelter unless Williams, Harvey agreed to the sale. Patiño and Cornish initially bought a half interest in Williams, Harvey, and by the end of the war they had purchased the remainder, giving them control of the British smelter. Between 1916 and 1918, the two men also established the Williams, Harvey Corporation, an American firm that built a smelter in Long Island, New York.

Meanwhile, Patiño continued to build his holdings. Through the firm of Penny and Duncan, he secretly bought stock in the Llallagua Tin Company, his old rival from the Espíritu Santo mountain. In 1924, he and Cornish announced that they owned two-thirds of the Llallagua stock. A few weeks later, he founded Patiño Mines and Enterprises Consolidated, which he incorporated in Delaware, near sources of American capital. He also bought interests in African and Asian tin mines. All of these transactions internationally diversified his holdings. In 1914, he and his family moved to Europe, where he could more closely supervise his companies and investments, and he left his Bolivian holdings under the management of a trusted and brilliant lawyer, Arturo Loaiza.

Patiño never returned to Bolivia after 1920, although he continued to exert tremendous economic and political influence in his homeland. Besides his tin mining interests in Bolivia, he owned banks and commercial enterprises and produced other metals, such as tungsten, lead, and silver. He founded the nation’s Mercantile Bank, invested heavily in the electrical utilities of Oruro and Cochabamba, and supplied funds to build a railroad from Sucre to Potosí when other sources of capital were unavailable. As the country was dependent on earnings from tin exports, Patiño had tremendous political power in Bolivia and could rely on the government to send in troops to quell labor unrest in his mines. It was said that his Catavi and Siglo XX mines produced and consumed more electricity than the rest of Bolivia. Patiño also served as his country’s ambassador to Spain and to France. His wealth was staggering, with some ranking him among the world’s five wealthiest individuals.

When tin prices declined in the late 1920’s because of an oversupply of tin on the world market, Patiño led the move to create the Tin Producers Association in July, 1929, in an attempt to increase prices by limiting production. With Patiño as its president, the association set national output quotas (with Bolivia receiving a large share), and by 1933 the International Tin Control Scheme had managed to eliminate the tin glut and raise prices. The outbreak of World War II, with the war’s tremendous demand for metals, ended the need for the cartel. To avoid the hostilities, Patiño moved to the United States in 1939. He wanted to return to Bolivia, but his doctors advised against it because of a serious heart attack he had suffered in 1924. Patiño did return to South America, however, dying in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 20, 1947. He was buried on the grounds of his Paurumani estate outside Cochabamba.

Legacy

Simón Iturri Patiño left a contradictory legacy. A self-made entrepreneur and industrialist of mestizo ancestry, he accumulated one of the great fortunes of the early twentieth century and gained entry into the circles of European aristocracy and international finance. Bolivia depended on revenues from his tin, yet many Bolivians believed Patiño had abandoned the nation and had siphoned profits away from a country that desperately needed the capital for its own development. The largest private employer in Bolivia, Patiño provided housing, schools, hospitals, and subsidized food for his workers and their families, but he kept their wages low and their working hours long. Until the 1940’s, his managers brutally resisted any workers’ attempts to organize, as evidenced by the massacre at the Catavi mine in 1942.

Patiño’s mining empire in Bolivia did not survive. During the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, the nation seized his mines. Nonetheless, after Patiño’s European smelters refused to refine Bolivian tin ore, Bolivia compensated his family for the confiscated properties. Patiño’s heirs suffered surprisingly little from the expropriation because his diversification had made his Bolivian holdings a relatively small part of his estate. By the early 1970’s, after declining tin prices and mismanagement had caused the collapse of Bolivia’s government-operated mining industry, some workers found themselves wishing for the return of Don Simón.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Brown, Kendall W. "Simón Iturri Patiño." Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy, edited by Howard Bromberg, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLIW_1306369001306.

APA 7th

Brown, K. W. (2010). Simón Iturri Patiño. In H. Bromberg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Brown, Kendall W. "Simón Iturri Patiño." Edited by Howard Bromberg. Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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