94 CultureShock! Bolivia
the groundbreaking Chuquiago, directed by Oscar Soria and
Antonio Eguino.
Exacerbating the double domination of class and race
was the medieval heritage of the land owners. At a time
when Europe was moving from the middle ages to liberal
capitalism, Bolivia’s Spanish colonisers were a vestige of
the Spanish Reconquest against the Moors, rebelling against
post-Inquisition reforms that would liberalise society back
in Spain.
The economic foundation of the colony was strikingly
clear. Spain opened the groin of this rich land and extracted
its wealth, without bothering to elaborate value added
products prior to exportation. The silver mines in the Cerro
Rico (Rich Hill) above Potosí are the shining example of such
merciless plundering. With no local economy created, native
Bolivians and imported African slaves died in the primitive
mines of what became the wealthiest city in the world in the
1700s during a two-century binge of dig and take.
Within the open veins of this landlocked country, in the
second quarter of the 20th century, Bolivia’s three dominant
mining companies, exemplifi ed by tin magnate Simón Patiño,
presided over a continuation of the colonial system that had
been supposedly terminated with political independence
in 1825. The economy of extraction of natural resources
was institutionalised. A notable example was guano, a bird
dung on the Pacifi c coast which served as rich fertiliser for
European farms, over which a war was lost to Chile in 1883
to the benefi t of British exporters.
Tin was another example of systematic single-product
colonial dependence. Tin was directly exported without
even being refi ned into the simplest of value added exports,
(tin cans or roofi ng material, for example), a process that
would have created jobs for the people. During World War
II, Bolivia supported the allied effort by selling tin at a tenth
of its market value. Then tin collapsed in the world market
and the country was left with nothing to show for it.
Later, there was oil and then natural gas, to be extracted
from the land and sent abroad, with virtually no job-producing
industries at home prior to exportation. Whatever income