This is The Guardian.

The Guardian is a refugee by Dan Collins.

Moritz Hostchild was constantly on the move.

In the early 1930s he could be found in the grand hotels of London, New York or Paris

or on the back of a mule following rough mountain trails in search of mineral seams in the

Bolivian andes.

It was one of those trips to a remote mountain village, according to family legend,

that the mining magnate came across a local men's sketching.

The artist was afraid to show Hostchild his drawing, which was an unflattering caricature of him.

But the magnet found the parodies so amusing that he decided to fund the scholarship for the artist

to study draftsmanship in Paris.

Hostchild could afford to laugh at his own expense.

His true risk-taking had made him one of the richest men in South America in the early 20th century

and earned him notoriety as one of Bolivia's three tin barons.

The trio, Hostchild, Simone Patinio and Oxford educated Carlos Saramayo,

had made fortunes trading Bolivian tin, which during the first half of the 20th century

was much in demand for aeroplane parts and food cans and accounted for more than half of the country's export earnings.

The barons were seen as a cartel, a circle of oligarchs who negotiated between themselves

and had more power than the state.

The Bolivian historian Robert Brockman told me.

Tin was Bolivia's principal mineral export in the 1930s

and the tin barons controlled 72% of the nation's tin exports,

...