Look Homeward

High on the chill slopes of Bolivia's 12,000-ft. altiplano, a cholo (half-Indian) store clerk one day let a prospector settle a $250 account for a claim to a tin mine. The clerk's boss, outraged by the deal, gave him the claim and made him pay the bill. That was how, at the turn of the century, cholo Simon I. Patino got into the tin business. For years, he and his sinewy wife wielded picks, hauled up buckets, smashed ore. By 1910, they were rich.

The tin can and the automobile (bearings) made Tin Baron Patio one of the world's five richest men. He moved to Europe, lived like a prince among a fawning nobility that overlooked his cholo beginnings. From Paris, Patino managed Bolivian politics, elected presidents, juggled Cabinet ministers. He had himself appointed Bolivian Minister to France. Son Antenor married the stately Cristina de Bourbon, niece of dethroned Alfonso XIII of Spain.

But shrewd Tin Baron Patino did not let diplomatic frippery interfere with business. When the world depression of the 1930s set off a tin crisis, he helped form a cartel with British and Dutch producers. Together, they held prices firm.

Patino rode out World War II just as easily--first in a six-room suite in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, later in the Plaza in Buenos Aires. It was in the Plaza this week that Simon Patino quietly died at 86. He will be buried--for the time being--in Buenos Aires. Later he may be carried to the homeland he had not seen for 23 years, to the blue marble mausoleum built for him on the harsh Andean uplands.

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