The Economist May 7th 2022 43
The AmericasMiamiHub for a hemisphere
F
or joan didion, an American essayist,
Miami in the 1980s was “not exactly an
American city...but a tropical capital: long
on rumour, short on memory, overbuilt on
the chimera of runaway money”. Nearly 40
years later, the place that Didion described
is still more of a tropical capital of Latin
America than a typical city in the United
States. But the money which is flowing in
to it is no chimera.
Miami has become a commercial hub
for the hemisphere. MiamiDade County,
which comprises the city of Miami and
around three dozen municipalities, is
where 1,200 multinational corporations
have set up the headquarters of their Latin
American operations. The county’s gdp
was around $172bn in 2019, making it the
14thlargest county economy in the United
States, and roughly as big as the combined
gdp of Ecuador and Uruguay. Miami’s air
port handles 43% of all flights from the Un
ited States to South America. It is the
“meeting place for the hemisphere”, says
Alejandro Portes of Princeton University.
“It is easier to commute from capitals in
Latin America to Miami than between cap
itals in Latin America,” he says.
With more than half of its residents
born outside the United States, Miami has
the largest proportion of immigrants of
any metropolitan area in the country.
Around 70% of the 2.7m residents in the
county are Hispanic, about double the
share in 1980. Its population is increas
ingly diverse (see chart on next page).
Recent geopolitical shocks, such as the
war in Ukraine and frostier relations be
tween the United States and China, have
made Miami more important, argues
Mauricio ClaverCarone, president of the
InterAmerican Development Bank (idb),
who comes from the city. He sees a trend
for “regionalisation” over “globalisation”.
This plays to Miami’s strengths as a Latin
American hub. “There’s no greater city that
encapsulates the heterogeneity of Latin
America and the Caribbean,” he says.
Turmoil in Latin America has often
boosted Miami’s fortunes. When Communists seized control of Cuba in 1959, Cu
bans with money or getupandgo fled the
island and flocked to Miami. Next came
Nicaraguans escaping from a socialist rev
olution in the 1970s and the civil war that
followed it. From the mid1990s Colombi
ans came in droves, fleeing drugrelated vi
olence. All these groups have prospered,
and contributed to Miami’s prosperity.
The city benefits in both good times and
bad, says Jorge Perez, the boss of a property
firm. People from unstable places buy
homes in Miami as a “secure investment”,
he says. Following the election of leftist
leaders in Peru and Chile last year, the
number of people moving from those
countries has increased, thinks Paulo Bac
chi of Artefacto, a furniture shop. And
when Latin American economies are doing
well, people buy second homes. The bass and the sunset low
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was found
ed in Havana but shut down in 1961 by its
most famous old boy, Fidel Castro. Unde
terred, it moved to Miami. Its staff, many of
them Catholic priests, now teach children
whose families come from across the re
gion. “Latin America’s losses are our
gains,” says Father Guillermo GarciaTu
non, the president of the school. And re
cently, Americans moving to Florida for
sunshine and low taxes have also been ap
plying in large numbers.
The political upheaval that drives peo
ple to Miami shows few signs of abating.
Many desperate Haitians and Cubans—es
caping from gang violence, poverty or soM IAMI
If Latin America has a commercial capital, it is in Florida→Alsointhissection
44 AMLO’slatestswipe at democracy
— Bello is away