Latin America's Pain Fuels Miami's Prosperity

By Gary Silverman

They were having a party at the new US headquarters of Ocasa International in Miami.

A white tent was set up in the parking lot and the Johnnie Walker Black Label was flowing and Fernando Ucciferri could not help but have mixed emotions. Mr Ucciferri had cause for celebration.

A 32-year-old graphic artist from Buenos Aires, Mr Ucciferri is a partner in the company that made the yellow-and-black signs adorning the home of Ocasa, a courier company based in Argentina.

But like many people in Miami, Mr Ucciferri is making up for lost time. After his business failed in the Argentine financial crisis of 2001 he moved to Florida and struggled - even working for a time as a landscaper to put his "idea of colours" to some use. He got a chance to return to his chosen profession as a graphic artist only last October.

"It takes 10 years to be established here," he said. "I am not so young, I have experience, but I have to start again."

For decades, people like Mr Ucciferri have fuelled the growth of the Miami area - a region that embodies the freewheeling spirit of Florida's economy but has dev-eloped on a different trajectory to the rest of the state.

To a large extent, Miami's prosperity is based on Latin America's pain. The city was transformed by the arrival of wealthy Cubans fleeing their homeland after Fidel Castro's seizure of power in 1959. It is now being remade by other groups escaping political and economic turmoil - Argentines, Colombians, Peruvians and Venezuelans among them.

"Someone is always keeping Miami afloat," said Lawrence Shaw, an American Express financial adviser who attended the Ocasa party. "Right now, Venezuela is number one. With all the problems in Venezuela they are coming up to buy property."

So much money and talent has made its way to Miami that the city has taken on the character of a virtual business capital for Latin America. Miami is where the action is - for global companies looking to do business in Latin America and for Latin Americans seeking opportunity. The Cubans made it possible for Spanish speakers to feel comfortable in Miami and now it is rare to hear English in many parts of town.

"People say the good thing about Miami is it's close to the US," joked Arquimedes Trujillo, president of Conceptual Advertising, which publishes the magazine of the Latin Builders Association, a powerful business group founded by Cuban construction contractors in the 1970s.

Miami's role as a Latin American hub can be observed at places such as Merrill Lynch's office. Its Miami revenues grew 13 per cent last year - compared with about 8 per cent for the company as a whole, said Brian Sepe, managing director for Miami. The superior growth in Miami reflected the arrival of so many wealthy Latin Americans.

"The political turmoil in Latin America has led to a redirection of wealth and residency," said Martha Chinea, administrative manager of Merrill's private client group in Miami. "There has been a lot of reallocation of investment to real estate."

Merrill is using its Miami office - which boasts 257 employees of 25 nationalities - to drum up business in Latin America. To provide more personal service for visiting Latin clients, Merrill is transferring a fund manager from Geneva to Miami.

Mr Sepe's brokers are also visiting overseas customers as often as once a month. He notes that referrals from one country often lead to business in another - as was the case recently when a contact in the Dominican Republic led to a big Bolivian account.

"Miami is a global city," said Mr Sepe, who interrupted the conversation to take a call from a broker travelling in Costa Rica. "You get connected to the right circles."

That has been the experience of Ocasa. When it first set up shop in the US in the 1980s it ran its operations from New York. It moved its headquarters to Miami the following decade and is now doing so well it has bought a 28,000sqft facility west of the Miami airport.

"The important thing about Miami is how many large corporations have established their regional Latin American headquarters in Miami," said Marcelo Reggiardo, a member of Ocasa's executive committee. "That's why Miami became so important for us. It's the gateway to Latin America."

Ocasa's speciality is delivering shipments quickly through Latin America's bulky customs bureaucracies. Its original foreign clientele was financial - companies such as American Express and Citigroup, which use Ocasa to send statements, cards and other materials to their Latin American account holders.

Ocasa also hand-delivers pension cheques from European governments to Latin American recipients - a way to ensure that the payments get through and that the beneficiaries are alive.

More recently, Ocasa has started working for laboratories that conduct clinical trials for drugs in Latin America. Ocasa's role is to deliver pharmaceuticals to test facilities in Latin America and to bring blood samples back to the US - sensitive work that requires the kind of skilled bilingual workers who are easy to find in Miami, Mr Reggiardo said.

Standing under the tent at the Ocasa party, it is hard to overlook the cruel irony that an Argentinian such as Mr Ucciferri had to leave his homeland to find work with an Argentine company such as Ocasa. But that is the logic of Latin America today and it will only make Miami richer in the future.

Entrepreneurial Latin Americans keep showing up in Miami, not always because they have to, but also because they want what the city has to offer. Maria López, a 33-year-old fashion designer from Cali, Colombia, is typical in that respect.

She designs women's sportswear - clingy outfits for the gym - that can cost up to $160 (?132, £89), well beyond the means of most people in Colombia. She came to Miami three years ago to see how far her talent would take her.

"You have to be here," she said. "Everything in Colombia is small. This is the big market."