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Since the murder last year of Bolivia's dictator Colonel German Busch, who tried to nationalize tin exports, Bolivia's freelance politicos have followed the Patino formula of playing off the U. S. against Germany. They have made it a three-cushion game by also intriguing with the British, who, to preserve their profitable smelting monopoly, would rather not see Bolivian ore go direct to the U. S. But while Patino was in Spain, his old enemy and the No. 2 Bolivian tin miner, Mauricio Hochschild, took sides. Hochschild went to the U. S. last winter, contracted with Phelps Dodge Corp. to supply tin for its new experimental smelter (TIME, Dec. 11). Meanwhile American Metal Co. Ltd. and American Smelting and Refining Co. also built pilot plants, and learned how to process Bolivian ore (which is high-cost, low-grade) with no admixture of Malayan. By last week it was pretty clear that, besides accumulating a 75,000-ton stockpile of smelted tin, the U. S. must be prepared (in case Britain and Malaya go under) to smelt Bolivian ore on a big scale.
The first thing Simon Patino did on his arrival last week was to try to get aboard the U. S. defense juggernaut. He told the press he is "entirely in accord" with hemisphere defense plans (which means he would sell all his ore to the U. S.), would help U. S. defense by building a $2,000,000 smelter here, would see the Defense Advisory Commission as soon as he caught his breath. But the Defense Commission, feeling tough, was in no hurry. It knew that ex-Internationalist Patino had nowhere else to go.