Month: March 2024

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Bolivia 1962, Remembering perhaps too fondly, the Bolivian cavalry

By 1962, Bolivia was a poor, landlocked country. It’s last chance to date of real wealth came in the 1930s when oil was expected to be found in the Chaco region. Bolivia spent heavily to improve it’s military to be able to hold on to the claim to the area in the face of  the rival claims of Paraguay, a weak country with it’s own history of shrinking wars. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

So if a country never wins a war why celebrate the military history? Instead why not  concentrate on those currently serving in the hopes of the current being proved more useful. Well that is not how Bolivia viewed it in 1962. So here we have a Calvary charge of the Bolivian Army. The only war that I can find with any meaningful deployment of Cavalry was the 1930s Chaco War, so that is the story I will tell below.

Todays stamp is issue A153, a 500 Boliviano stamp issued by Bolivia  on September 5th, 1962. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations displaying different one time sections of the army. there were also semi related air mail issues. By 1962, what had been Cavalry regiments were now mechanized divisions. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The area of Chaco was recognized as an area of Paraguay although there had been some peaceful intrusion by Bolivian nationals. There was a hope on the part of foreign oil companies that the area might prove rich in oil. Royal Dutch Shell worked through Paraguay to search and Standard Oil worked through the Bolivian government. After having previously lost its outlet to the Pacific in an ill thought out war with Chile, Bolivia built up it’s Army to defend the hoped for big oil strike. An arms deal was struck with the British arms concern Vickers to heavily rearm including with airplanes and even three tanks. The arms package was not completely delivered as Bolivia did not make all the due payments.

When war broke out with Paraguay, Bolivia looked much more powerful on paper, including 7 Cavalry regiments. This was somewhat a paper tiger as over one third of army units were absent or on leave at any one time. Yet Bolivia was confident that under German general Kundt there would be success.

The expensive Vickers tank that Bolivia hoped would save them

The motorized equipment proved ineffective due to dust and inability to deal with breakdowns. The Cavalry on both sides ended up fighting on foot as the area was too barren for horses to forage or kept watered. Advanced countries cut off arms supplies to both sides. This proved very advantageous to Paraguay which had developed an effective locally made hand grenade called the small turtle. The Paraguayan forces proved faster moving and were kept slightly better supplied as the area was Paraguay. In 1935 Bolivia had lost the war  and the area was recognized as Paraguay, though not officially until 1997. 170,000 people died in the war.

Well what ever happened to the big oil strike that was just around the corner. The corner was further off than thought. In 2012 then Paraguay President Frederico Franco announced an oil strike in the area or the Periti River in Chaco  and that in the name of the 30,000 Paraguayans that died in the Chaco war,  will soon be the richest oil zone in South America. Don’t hold your breath would be my advice.

President Frederico Franco who announced the Chaco oil strike 80 years later.

 

Well my drink is empty. You think of the quite high losses in these stupid wars over nothing and it becomes difficult to recognize the bravery that this stamp wants you to remember. Come again soon for another story to be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

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Soviet Union 1988, Restructuring, speeding up, and democratization will get us on track to being poor

From 1928-1973 the economy of the Soviet Union grew faster than the rival USA. After that there was a slowing down of progress. In 1986 new leader Gorbachev blamed the slowdown on Brezhnev and started a program to bring market forces into the industrial and agricultural economy. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp expressing the hope that the restructuring will succeed uses a great deal of traditional Soviet iconography. The whole point of the restructuring however was to redistribute from the lazy worker to the profit bottom line of the still state owned enterprise. The operation now had to make enough to pay salaries, full employment be dammed. The effort failed, but imagine if had worked. The full power of the authoritarian state was  utilized to get more out of and pay less to the worker. A hoped for workers paradise becomes paradise for management.

Todays stamp is issue A2731, a five kopeck stamp issued by the Soviet Union on May 5th, 1988. It was a two stamp issue in the same denomination this promoting economic reform and the other political. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used or unused. 5 kopecks is now worth .065  of an American penny. A pretty poignant example of why the reforms couldn’t work. 5 kopecks wasn’t covering the cost of sending a letter yet the system worked. Suddenly raising the postage rate to meet and beat expenses required hyper inflation and a deep decrease in demand.

There was some debate inside the Soviet Union about why things became stagnant after 1973. The obvious answer was the 1970s oil shocks that saw a large increase in output being redirected to cover energy cost, a situation shared with the west. The Soviet reformers of the 1980s had different ideas. They began calling workers work shy, lazy and drunk. They say this was allowed to happen as leadership was old, grey and out of touch. For older, grey leaders like Brezhnev and Chernencko it was an easy slur.

Gorbachev gave a speech at Togellati to describe his economic reforms. Togellati was the site of one of the biggest car factories in the world. Now employment and output is down over 80 %, the factory is owned by Renault/Nissan and most exports go to Kazakhstan, which didn’t use to be exports. The idea was that GOSPLAN in Moscow would stop mapping out production and resources, but that the enterprise after filling any government orders could sell as much as it wanted for whatever it could. The government would no longer cover shortfalls but still get any profits.

The old Stalin era GOSPLAN headquarters that used to centrally plan the economy. Now it is the Duma building

The results were just disastrous. GDP in the old Soviet Union declined 64% over the 11 years after this stamp. A few oligarchs got rich but the average worker was impoverished. Even life expectancy, which peaked at 69 in 1988 dropped to 64 in the early 2000s. In 1991 Gorbachev was deposed and the Soviet Union broke up. It would be 2004 before Russian GDP exceeded pre restructuring levels. The GDP in Russia is now more than twice the old levels but wealth is much more concentrated.

Well, my drink is empty. I will pour another to toast my fellow drunk, lazy, work shy workers out there. Our leaders should be at least trying to make our lives paradise. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

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Columbia 1938, Coffee growing from a Priest’s assigned pennance to Juan Valdez and rollercoasters

Columbia is famous for coffee growing, though in output it is third in the world after Brazil and Vietnam. How it got there was a combination of the little guy beating out the big guy followed by an old fashioned uplifting Madison Avenue ad campaign. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp shows a little progression in Columbia and then a reversion. The stamp issue lasted over a decade with the first printing carried out by the American Bank Note Company in the USA. My stamp is from that batch. In 1944 there was a batch printed locally by the Columbian Bank Note Company and even something called Lithographia National Bogotá. In 1949, the stamp was back to the American Bank Note Company with the stamp turning blue. No of the changes effect the stamps low value but I wonder the story there.

Todays stamp is issue A176, a 5 Centavo stamp issued by Columbia on March 3rd, 1938. It was an eight stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp in all it’s forms is worth 25 cents.

Coffee planting began in Columbia in the 1790s. It was a group of Catholic Priests that promoted the cultivation. In particular, a Priest named Francisco Romero would require coffee cultivation as penance. In 1808 the first export of Columbian coffee was made out of the port of Cucuta.

In the late 19th century, international coffee prices were quite high and the rich families of Columbia set up large slash and burn plantations to take advantage. To do so, they borrowed large sums of capital from abroad. In the early 20th century, there was both a a war in Columbia and a drop in the international price and lead to bankruptcy of the large scale operations. The industry was saved by a group of very small planters who formed a federation to get their high end arabica beans out to the world market.

In 1958 the coffee planters federation hired an American ad agency under William Bernbach. His motto was “Lets prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.” The federation was worried that their beans would be blended with cheaper beans from other countries and people would not realize how good the Columbian beans are. Bernbach came up with the fictional character of Juan Valdez who would be usually shown with his mule Cochita to represent positively the Columbian coffee planter. For 37 years Juan Valdez was played by Columbian actor Carlos Sanchez and since 2006 by real life coffee planter Carlos Casteneta. The branding is even popular in Columbia with 135 coffee shops named for Juan Valdez.

William Bernbach
Juan Valdez with Cochita the mule

The coffee federation to show how important coffee planting was to Columbia and inspired by a sugar industry experience opened a Coffee Experience Park in 1995. As with stamp collectors these days, they found the park wasn’t interesting anyone under 40. To increase visitors, they acquired the old Zambezi Zinger roller coaster from an amusement park in Kansas City to attract the young at heart. Ugh.

Well my drink is empty. I wonder if Mr. Valdez has any suggestions for the next round. Come again soon when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

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South Africa 1962, Peak gold

Around the time of this stamp, 40 % of the gold ever mined on earth had come from South African mines. Despite the artificially low prices of the metal due to being fixed to a basket of currencies, there was a class of Rand lords that had new fortunes. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I love the image on this stamp. Having fought the earth to extract it, you now have the gold molten and pure and you can watch them being poured into the molds of those life changing gold bricks. The pits of Hell yielding to heaven.

Todays stamp is issue A113, a two cent, the currency was newly decimalized, stamp issued by South Africa on May 31st, 1961. It was a 23 stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The first large scale gold strike in South Africa was in Witwatersrand in 1884. There was a huge gold rush where the population of Johannesburg increased 10 fold in 4 years. There was quickly a financial system put in place to fund the capital needs of the new industry. It is thought that control over the industry was a contributing factor to the inter white Boer war at the turn of the century. As part of the compromise that ended it, 64,000 Chinese contract workers were brought in to do the hard work deep under ground. The gold rush expanded when technology advanced to allow gold to be extracted from pyritic ore by drowning it in a solution of cyanide. The government set up compensation for miners of all races suffering from mining related silicosis and pulmonary tuberculosis.

Starting around 1910 the gold mining industry changed as some of the early fields played out and management tried to cut cost. The contracts with the Chinese were not renewed and the Chinese went home. In their place were very low cost black miners not recruited locally but rather migrant workers from outside South Africa. White miners formed a union to, in addition to wage demands, tried to keep the migrant blacks only doing the old Chinese jobs. Though the miners were white, the South African government sided with management in order to keep up production. The black miners eventually formed a separate union to fight separately from the whites to improve their lot. South African gold output peaked in the mid 1970s at over 1000 tonnes per year.

The gold industry has gradually declined since. The change in government saw one change that proved beneficial. The migrant recruitment ended and all miners are now recruited locally. The relatively high pay has been one place where South African blacks have advanced economically.

Gold mining is still a very important industry in South Africa although it is now lower than China and Australia and accounts for only 4 percent of the world’s gold output. Employment in the industry has dropped to 100,000 from the peak of 360,000. There is hope that there is still much gold to find and that new technology can extract more gold from the tailings of played out former mines.

Well my drink is empty. What got me interested in this subject was recently watching the 1974 movie Gold. the movie stared Sir Roger Moore as a South African mine manager that has to deal with danger in the mine, ossified management and a plot from international finance types who want to flood the mine killing everyone to create a market moving event they can bet on because owning a freaking gold mine isn’t enriching them fast enough. Great locally shot movie! Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

Gold movie poster