Speaker Report 9 October 2019:
Dr Matthew O’Meagher
Matthew was introduced by Heather Lucas who knows Matthew well having been to university together. He did his PhD in Liberation Theology and spent a number of years in South America, but he is now at Victoria University as the Director of the Victoria hosted CAPE – a Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence. These Centres are tasked with better preparing New Zealanders to engage and do business in the region. Matt’s other role at VUW is to facilitate the university relationships with universities around the world.
From Matt’s experience, few New Zealanders engage deeply with Latin America. For many, they haven’t had the cultural connection unless it was through sport, music or cartoons of a bygone era. He became interested in the region when he went to Otago Uni – through the Falklands war and as a Roman Catholic he became very interested in the link between religion and politics.
Having been appointed to teach New Zealand history he became fascinated with New Zealand/Latin American interactions. He had a brief stint in a diplomatic role in the Santiago Embassy and education attaché where he was trying to build education and business links.
Matt uses the term ‘the missing shore’. New Zealand looks to many neighbouring shores but rarely to Latin America, so it could be seen as the missing part of the Pacific Rim. When we think about Latin America we often have positive associations with its culture but often more negative ones about its economics politics and business. It’s often referred to as a fun place but considered really unstable with lots of drugs and parties. News is filtered through previously, British and more recently, American eyes, and we are not used to looking across the Pacific – rather to the north where our markets are.
He gave us a thumbnail chronology of movement, colonisation and the influences of competition between Britain and Spain – all contributing to where Latin America is today – and subsequently how we perceive the region. In more recent times there has been trade and treaties such as the Antarctic Treaty – signed almost 60 years ago. Once it became clear that Britain was going to join the EU, we began looking to Latin America and in the early 1970’s we established Embassy’s to open up new opportunities. Unfortunately, this timing also coincided with very serious human rights abuse in the region as a result of powerful and destructive dictatorships.
Despite many negative perceptions, New Zealand Governments have tried to get ahead of public opinion. For example, Mike Moore sent a trade delegation to the region - as agricultural producers we have common interests that could be mutually beneficial. The Latin American Business Council was created. Helen Clark created a Latin America strategy and also created the P4 (which was the forerunner to the CPTTP) to encourage engagement of nations with common issues. Air NZ started flying to the region, we play Argentina in sports, and the Prime Minister’s scholarships (to South America) were created.
New Zealand and Latin American nations are at the heart of trying to re-think the future of trade, trying to get like-minded nations thinking about re-defining rules such as climate change and sustainability. The CAPEs were established to upskill New Zealanders, preparing them to engage with the region by closing the knowledge, language and cultural gaps and to form bridges to promote positive trade opportunities. Some very useful links can be found on the website
https://latamcape.org.nz/
Brenda Lazelle
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