Hochschild, Mauricio (1881–1965)

Mauricio Hochschild (b. 17 February 1881; d. 1965), Bolivian tin magnate. A naturalized Argentine citizen of Jewish ancestry who was born in Biblis, Germany, Hochschild emigrated to Chile in 1911. Twenty years later he was one of three tin barons of the Bolivian oligarchy (the Rosca) whose economic, social, and political privilege dominated the country until 1952. His mines, the second-largest tin producers, averaged 25 percent of Bolivia's total tin output after World War II and provided most of the ore sold to the United States. Hochschild influenced public opinion through his La Paz newspaper, Última Hora.

A mining engineer educated at Freiburg University, Hochschild was a metals broker until depressed tin prices after World War I enabled him to buy up bankrupt mines. By 1911 he had acquired the Minera Unificada del Cerro de Potosí; subsequently he consolidated the Compañía Minera de Oruro and the San José, Itos, Colquiri, and Matilde mines into the Hochschild Group. He narrowly escaped the animosity of the military socialist governments of Germán Busch, who ordered him shot for opposing the 1939 mining law, and of Gualberto Villarroel, who had him kidnapped. The 1952 revolution nationalized his mining properties.

See alsoAramayo Family; Tin Industry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Víctor Andrade, My Missions for Revolutionary Bolivia, 1944–1962, edited by Cole Blasier (1976) pp. 69-70, 114-121, 123-124.

Alfonso Crespo, Los Aramayo de Chichas, tres generaciones de mineros bolivianos (1981), pp. 249-250, 311-316, 325-335.

Eduardo Arze Cuadros, La economía de Bolivia (1979), pp. 259-261.

Additional Bibliography

Bieber, Leon E. "La Sociedad de Proteccion a los Inmigrantes Israelitas: Su aporte a la integracion economica de judios en Bolivia, 1939–1945." Latin American Research Review 34 (1999): 152-178.

Hillman, John. "Bolivia and the International Tin Cartel, 1931–1941." Journal of Latin American Studies 20 (May 1988): 83-110.

Waszkis, Helmut. Dr. Moritz (Don Mauricio) Hochschild, 1881–1965: The Man and His Companies: A German Jewish Mining Entrepreneur in South America. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert; Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001.

                          Waltraud Queiser Morales