The Miami skyline.
Photographer: Rose Marie Cromwell for Bloomberg Markets
Socialist Wave Sends Money Flying Out of Latin America
As inequality pushes politics further left, the region’s wealthy are sending the most money abroad in over a decade.
At the four-star Hotel Estelar la Fontana in Bogotá, a hundred wealthy Colombians are learning how to send their money to the US—and fast. Crammed shoulder to shoulder on leather chairs, the crowd admires slides of waterfront properties in Miami. The real estate could be an investment, a second home or the start of a new life. A one-bedroom sells for $1 million, more than 300 times the annual minimum wage in Colombia. Some gasp at the price; others, it turns out, can afford it.
On this morning in March, a real estate agent walks his prospects through the nitty-gritty of visas. “It’s sad we’ve come to this,” a man whispers. He’s referring to the dash for an exit after Colombia elected Gustavo Petro, a leftist former guerrilla who quickly moved to raise taxes on the rich. Maikol Di Pietro, a lawyer with Colombian and Italian citizenship, is looking for an apartment for his mother and, eventually, one for himself. “Things are changing,” he says, “and not in a good way.”