1979: It's Like All of Downtown Miami Was One Big Shopping Mall...

"It's like a fever," Gustavo Godoy reports of Miami's hottest shopping trend as the 1970s faded into the 1980s: Retail tourists from Latin America.
Low prices on such products as radios, TV sets, calculators, stereo systems, toys and clothing -- and the suitcases to take it all home in -- made it worthwhile for shoppers to fly to Miami, buy in Miami and stay in Miami before heading home with their purchases, on which duty had to be paid. But US prices were so far below those in Latin America that a retail "frenzy" exploded in Miami's largely deserted downtown.
Godoy gets some sound from Emilio Calleja, Executive Director of the Downtown Business Association, who terms the buying binge a "tremendous shopping revolution." Demand for retail space was such that some old buildings were repurposed and some were demolished to make way for new, retail-ready construction.
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This video and audio is copyrighted/owned by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College.
This clip is derived from news video in the WTVJ Collection. Accession number 205-06; airdate September 26, 1979.

[@RobertoLopezstudyis]

Miami was becoming the gateway to Latin America as Julia Tuttle the mother of Miami predicted in the 1890s.

[@mariaalvarez9383]

My family's store is one in the video.

[@wolfsonarchive]

Wow!

[@jeshkam]

Are you in the video too?

[@videosuperhighway7655]

Lol Bolivares not anymore.