Don Simon Iturbi Patino

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Don Simon Iturbi Patino (1860-1947) was an extremely wealthy Bolivian businessman who owned the Huanuni tin mine, the world’s largest tin mine in the 1930s-40s. In his early life, Patino was clerk at a mining-supply store in a largely impoverished Bolivian city. Later, a customer who was in debt towards Patino offered a deed to an old and rarely used tin mine to compensate. Patino then discovered the vast tin deposits in the mountains after mining with a burro and pickaxe. After World War I, his business was used in almost every area of tin products and goods in the U.S. and the world. He later became a politician and served as ambassador for Spain and France, though he was often criticized for his mixed family backgrounds. Him and his family later welcomingly, by the European Elite, moved to France due to discrimination by the Bolivian aristocracy. He later built several mansions in the locations of Paris, Biarritz, and Nice, which the one in Nice was describe to be “hideous beyond belief” due to its amphitheatre, parks filled with palm trees, and a reconstruction of a Greek temple in ruins. He built three large palaces in Bolivia though he would never return, yet built them there for “just in case”. He died in 1947 and was buried high in the Bolivian mountains of his birth in a giant blue marble tomb.