Paranoia has gripped some Colombian billionaires after four years of President Gustavo Petro’s leftist government. Arturo Ramos, 30, says the country is headed for an economic collapse. “Everyone in Latin America has gone bankrupt because of the delusion that they can spend more money than they have,” says this heir to a business empire, who prefers to remain anonymous. He fears a decline in his standard of living. “I probably won’t have to sell the house or stop paying the staff or the driver. But a designer shirt, a bottle of whiskey, a trip to Europe, or any other imported product would become ten times more expensive,” he says. So, faced with the possibility of the left holding onto power in the upcoming presidential elections, he made a decision: to leave the country. The end of his master’s degree in New York, in mid-2024, coincided with a growing concern about what was happening in Colombia. “I was extremely worried about the pension, labor, and healthcare reforms. And that the government had taken on more debt to pay interest, passing the problem on to the next administration,” he explains in a video call. He hired a lawyer who helped him apply for permanent [...]
