Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BLACK MARKET FLORIDA
In 1919, when the US passed the 18th Amendment - making liquor illegal and inaugurat-
ing Prohibition - bootleggers discovered something that previous generations of slaves
and Seminoles knew well: Florida is a good place to hide.
Almost immediately Florida became, as the saying went, 'wet as a frog,' and soon fleets
of ships and airplanes were bringing in Cuban and Jamaican rum, to be hidden in coves
and dispersed nationwide.
Interestingly, Florida rumrunning was conducted mostly by local 'mom-and-pop' oper-
ations, not the mob, despite the occasional vacationing mobster like Al Capone. In this
way, Prohibition really drove home the benefits of a thriving black market. When times
were good, as in the 1920s, all that (illicit) money got launder-…um…pumped into real es-
tate, making the good times unbelievably great. When hard times hit in the 1930s, out-of-
work farmers could still make bathtub gin and pay the bills. Because of this often-explicit
understanding, Miami bars served drinks with impunity throughout the 1920s, and local
police simply kept walking.
In the 1960s and '70s, the story was repeated with marijuana. Down-on-their-luck com-
mercial fisherman made a mint smuggling plastic-wrapped bails of pot, and suddenly
Florida was asking, 'Recession? What recession?' West Florida experienced a condo
boom.
In the 1980s cocaine became the drug of choice. But this time the smugglers were Co-
lombian cartels, and they did business with a gun, not a handshake. Bloody shootouts on
Miami streets shocked Floridians (and inspired the Miami ViceTV show), but it didn't
slow the estimated $10-billion drug business - and did you notice Miami's new skyline? In
the 1980s so much cash choked Miami banks that smuggling currency itself became an
industry - along with smuggling out guns to Latin America and smuggling in rare birds,
flowers, and Cuban cigars.
By the 1990s the cartels were finished and banking laws were stricter, but some still be-
lieved that smuggling remained Florida's number-one industry.
Draining Swamps & Laying Rail
By the middle of the 19th century, the top half of Florida was reasonably well explored,
but South Florida was still an oozing, mosquito-plagued swamp. So, in the 1870s, Florida
inaugurated its first building boom by adopting laissez-faire economic policies centered on
three things: unrestricted private development, minimal taxes and land grants for railroads.