Nicolás Suárez

Statue of Nicolás Suárez Callaú in Guayaramerín , Bolivia

Nicolás Suárez Callaú (born September 10, 1851 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra , † January 1940 in Cachuela Esperanza ) was a Bolivian rubber baron in South America at the beginning of the 20th century.

Suárez grew up in Trinidad in the Bolivian lowlands and went to Reyes as a young man to first trade in cinchona , the extract of the cinchona tree, the bark of which was used to make quinine . He later switched to trading in rubber, where he controlled up to 60 percent of Bolivian production at the end of the 19th century. Shortly after the turn of the century, he made Cachuela Esperanza on the rapids of the Río Beni the center of his Bolivian rubber empire.

During the Acre War, Suárez formed a private army from his rubber employees, with which he took action against the Brazilian insurgents. These successful battles were one of the decisive factors in the fact that the Pando region continued to remain Bolivian territory.

During the height of the rubber boom, Nicolás Suárez's international trading company had sales offices in Acre , Manaus , Belém , and London , and Suárez owned over 80,000 km² of land in the Bolivian Beni and Pando departments , 50,000 head of cattle and six steamers.

In Bolivia, the Nicolás Suárez province was named after him.

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• Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert, Historia de Bolivia, Editorial Gisbert, La Paz, 2008, 7e éd., 739 p. ( ISBN 9789990583335 ), pp. 415-418