But this wasn’t the extent of Mauricio Braun’s property—he owned much more. By the turn of the century, he had become the owner of the Cutter Cove Mining Company, which dealt in copper, and the Bank of Chile and Argentina, which had its headquarters in Punta Arenas and branch offices in the Santa Cruz port towns of Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, and San Julián. From there he acquired the South American Export Syndicate Ltd.’s meatpacking plants in Río Seco, Punta Arenas, Puerto Deseado, and Río Grande (Argentina) and Puerto Sara, Puerto Borries and Puerto Natales (Chile). He then founded the La Austral insurance company and invested in the power plant in Puerto Santa Cruz, the electric company in Punta Arenas and the telephone companies in Magallanes and San Julián. He also owned the La Magallanes shoe factory and the Lavaderos de Oro Development Company.
The Brauns weren’t the only ones who were all-powerful in southern Chile and Argentina. There were two other characters who had also amassed mountains of gold in just a few short years. One of them, an Asturian named José Menéndez, has been accused of decimating the indigenous habitants of our far south in José María Borrero’s book Tragic Patagonia. The other, José Nogueira, was Portuguese. These two, Menéndez and Nogueira, transformed themselves from humble shopkeepers to powerful businessmen in a matter of years.
Elías Braun, the Russian Jew who had disembarked at Punta Arenas, was more than just a good businessman. As under monarchies, Braun, Menéndez, and Nogueira pooled their fortunes—not only as partners, but also as families. They had no racial complexes. And so Sara Braun—the eldest daughter of Elías Braun—married the Portuguese immigrant Nogueira, while Mauricio Braun married Josefina Menéndez Behety, the daughter of the Asturian José Menéndez, forming the Braun-Menéndez family. Nogueira died shortly thereafter and Sara Braun inherited a tremendous fortune, which she allowed her brother Mauricio to administer.
Power in Patagonia hinged on the following formula: land plus wool production plus commercialization plus control of transportation. Menéndez, Nogueira, and Braun understood this when they sought to take control of the seaways. How they pulled this off is explained perfectly by Frigate Captain Pedro Florido, the former governor of Tierra del Fuego, in his article “Don Mauricio Braun, Shipping Magnate”:
When the young Mauricio Braun first came ashore in Punta Arenas, so began his future career as a shipping magnate, a story that is inseparable from that of progress in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. Another ship arrived one year later, bringing a young Spaniard and his wife. Like Mauricio, they would forever be part of the history of the region’s progress and would even become part of his family, though no one suspected it at the time. This model couple, José Menéndez and María Behety, had decided to come to that distant port town in search of better prospects than those that had been offered them by the thriving city of Buenos Aires. Completing the trinity was a renowned Lusitanian who had been already been working in the region for some years as a shipwright and a guide, as he knew Tierra del Fuego’s symphony of inlets, bays, fjords, and channels—off-limits to the novice sailor—like the back of his hand. Here we refer to José Nogueira, the owner and operator of a fleet of 100–400 ton schooners, which he used for fishing, seal hunting, and trading with the region’s Indians, not to mention the man who had the privilege of introducing Falkland sheep to Patagonia’s ranches. Mauricio Braun started working in Nogueira’s offices when he was fifteen and quickly rose through the company thanks to his business skills and his knowledge of many languages, which made him stand out and earned him the respect of his bosses. As the years passed, our young hero took a fancy to Don José’s daughter, Josefina Menéndez Behety, and soon married her. As his sister had married Nogueira, he became the son-in-law and brother-in-law of his superiors, who would later become his business partners: first Nogueira and then Don José. Though they became partners in 1908, at first José Menéndez was his rival as Don José had dedicated himself to the maritime sector after his arrival in Punta Arenas. One of his first actions in this line of work had been to purchase a maritime supply business from Captain Luisito Piedrabuena. In this manner, José Menéndez, José Nogueira, and Mauricio Braun, who quickly became a partner in Nogueira’s firm, anticipated the theories of the great maritime philosopher Ratzel, who said in 1904, “If you would rule on land, harness the sea.”
The firm of Mauricio Braun and Scott was incorporated in 1904, shortly thereafter acquiring the schooner Ripling Wave, which they used to bring supplies to the distant ranches of Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan, returning with bales of wool. But Mauricio Braun didn’t stop there. As Punta Arenas was a required stopover between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in those days, maritime activities constituted the town’s main source of commercial activity, wealth and progress and the shipping magnate’s strong personality and drive consequently won him considerable prestige and influence. The Mauricio Braun & Blanchard Trading and Shipping Company was incorporated in 1892, with Mauricio providing 80 percent of the initial capital stock […] but the fierce competition between the various shipping firms, especially that owned by his father-in-law José Menéndez, forced him to overhaul the propulsion systems he had been using. […] Technical requirements and business rivalries took precedence over romanticism […] as progress and economic logic know nothing of sentimentality. The new company acquired many small passenger and cargo steamboats to serve the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, Río Grande, and other port towns in Santa Cruz were regularly served by the steamboats Lovart, Magallanes, Keek-Row, Patagonia, Porvenir, Araucanía, and Cordillera, among others. José Menéndez’s acquisition of the 350-ton steamboat Amadeo was the warning shot that motivated the firm of Braun & Blanchard to follow in the wake of Mauricio’s father-in-law and keep the competition going.
Braun & Blanchard also acted as a shipping agent for British shipping lines, acquiring a fleet of tugboats—Antonio, Díaz, Laurita, Armando, Carlos, etc.—along with a shipyard of the dimensions and characteristics needed to provide these boats with the logistical support they required. But the last word had yet to be said. While his father-in-law, a powerful adversary, was increasing the tonnage of his ships and extending his shipping lines beyond Buenos Aires and Valparaíso, Braun founded the Magallanes Whaling Company in 1904. […] He built the factory and principal whaling station on Deception Island, meeting the demand for blue whales and other, smaller cetaceans with his flagship Gobernador Borries and his other whaling vessels, all of them christened with the names of distinguished Chilean admirals: Montt, Uribe, Valenzuela, etc.
The rivalry between the shipping companies owned by Braun and José Menéndez was legendary, and it was this competition that created the regular steamboat lines serving Chile and Argentina. […] Mauricio and his father-in-law didn’t mix business with family, and if that sturdy Asturian had an overpowering character, his son-in-law, whom he confronted on the seas, was every bit his equal. By 1907, we can see that Braun & Blanchard were no longer content with only providing services along the coasts of Tierra del Fuego and the most southerly reaches of Chile and Argentina, and so they extended those services right up the Chilean coastline, leasing the Norwegian ships Alm and Westford. The following year, they bolstered this line with Chiloé and Magallanes, which had been built in the United Kingdom for carrying cargo and passengers. They acquired other vessels later on, all of them named after provinces of Chile: Valdivia, Llanquihue, Santiago, Tarapacá, and Valparaíso.
Of course, every maritime industry needs a shipyard to carry out repairs. And so Braun built one in Punta Arenas.
But, at the end of the day, son-in-law and father-in-law were drawn together. The historian Juan Hilarión Lenzi, in another article paying homage to Mauricio Braun, has this to say on the matter:
The trading and shipping ventures operating under the name of Braun & Blanchard—which served as a holding company—competed with those operated by José Menéndez, both in the region of the Strait of Magellan as well as throughout Patagonia. Father-in-law fought against son-in-law in the world of business. Neither Don José nor Don Mauricio gave any quarter. Their family ties and personal relationships did not interfere with their business plans, but it wasn’t logical