Word: paz
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...half-million modern Bolivians bring these backward highlanders to the ways of the western world? Amid the faded red-tile roofs of La Paz (pop. 321,000), world's highest capital, rise such steel-and-glass skyscrapers as the 14-story University of San Andres. Shaggy llamas shuffle indolently to the side of the capital's steep, cobbled streets to make way for Fords and Cadillacs. Government officials, demanding emancipation from the tyranny of tin, urge Bolivians to look eastward to the regions where the Andes fall away in giant green gorges called yungas to the Amazonian jungles...
...Villaroel's Finance Minister, Victor Paz Estenssoro, ran for the presidency from exile in Buenos Aires. He won, only to have the result set aside by an army junta that grabbed power. Egged on by the tin firms, the junta risked the collapse of Bolivia's tottering economy to wage a war of bluff with Stuart Symington, then head of RFC, trying to force him to buy Bolivia's tin for the U.S. near the Korea-scare price of $1.90 a Ib. Soon food ran short in Bolivian cities. Paz's nationalists shouted: "Bread...
Professor in Power. Here was no half-literate army bullyboy. Paz was one nationalist fanatic who talked cold business like a businessman, a former economics professor who had balanced a budget and knew the cost of sweeping reform. But with his economist's eyes wide open, Dictator Paz took the plunge by nationalizing tin at once in spite of his empty treasury. It was a political decision. "You forced me to do it," he told a representative of the tin companies...
...finality of Paz's nationalization decree, the tin companies are still fighting back. Because the bare book value of their property exceeds $60 million, they scoffed at the $22 million offered as indemnification by the government. They denounce the government's recently presented "bill" for $505 million in unaccounted-for foreign-exchange funds as a brazen pretext for outright confiscation. They have not accepted the government's invitation to negotiate indemnification which would include Patiño's U.S. minority stockholders. Their apparent strategy is to wait until the stoppage of tin sales-through unofficial world...
...seems caught in the middle. To make a go of his gamble, Paz needs foreign technicians, credits to buy supplies, peace with his miners, and a long-term contract for sale of Bolivia's tin. With huge private investments already under pressure in such neighboring countries as Venezuela, the U.S. cannot openly condone Bolivian nationalization. The RFC, which resumed buying Bolivian tin (at $1.17½ a Ib.) after Paz's revolution, stopped when nationalization occurred. Yet from a strategic standpoint, Bolivia's tin (only 20% of the world's nowadays, but the sole supply...