Tin & Temptation

To help keep Bolivia's social revolution out of the red--both financial and political--the U.S. has invested $150 million worth of grant aid in support of the government since the 1952 uprising. Through the years the U.S. persistently refrained from handing out cash to the nationalized, immensely inefficient tin mines, even though they provide Bolivia with 67% of its export income. Last week the U.S. was forced to reverse its stand.

To Bolivia went a comprehensive tin plan, along with a $10 million loan.

Cause of the reluctant U.S. switch was a clever Kremlin ploy. Returning from a Communist-subsidized trip to Moscow 18 months ago, a Bolivian professor brought news that the Soviets would be pleased to provide Bolivia with a smelter to refine its own tin ore. Last September Khrushchev buttonholed a Bolivian diplomat at a Manhattan cocktail party to make the offer again, and the pressure became too great for Bolivia to refuse.

Bit of Cheese. The Russian offer was little more than a tempting bit of cheese on the treadle of a Communist trap. A smelter would give employment to only 100 workers. It would force Bolivia to import large quantities of costly British coke to refine its relatively low-grade (30%) ore. It would put Bolivia in competition with the international tin cartel, thousands of expensive miles from potential markets. Bolivia would have to accept platoons of Soviet "technicians" and go through with the first Russo-Bolivian exchange of diplomats in history.

The U.S. counterattack attempts to deal with realities. Instead of a smelter, it calls for the construction of tin ore concentration plants to step up the ore-metal percentage. U.S. conditions for the loan are tough but businesslike. In addition to laying off some 8,000 nonproductive workers, the government must promise to divide its tin corporation, Comibol, into several separate government-owned companies operating under guidance of competent foreign consultants.

End of Myth. Although he tentatively accepted the U.S. offer, President Victor Paz Estenssoro still planned to send a mission to Moscow. Like many Latin American leaders, he must thread a delicate political path between right and left inside his country. There is already what amounts to open guerrilla warfare in the lush Cochabamba Valley only 140 miles from La Paz. A month ago a Communist-led band descended upon anti-Communists in the town of Cliza and touched off a four-day battle that left 100 dead. On the second day U.S. Ambassador (and former Math Professor) Carl Strom was heckled and stoned during and after a nonpolitical scientific lecture at Cocha-bamba's San Simon University.

In such a situation Paz Estenssoro could not afford to give the impression of rejecting the Russian smelter offer out of hand. Nor did the U.S. expect him to. But as he prepped his officials for next month's mission, high officials leaked that the junket was aimed at ending the "myth of Russian help" as much as anything else.

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