Enthusiasm for Latin projects on the decline, says festival organizer

Government enthusiasm for funding Macau- Latin projects is on the decline, according to one of the organizers of the Latin American Cultural Festival 2018, which runs until the end of November.

Gary Ngai, president of the executive board of the Macau Association for the Promotion of Exchange between Asia-Pacific and Latin America (MAPEAL), told the Times that despite the rhetoric of the importance of Macau in Sino-Latin relations, private initiatives in the city are facing ever-tighter budgets.

“We have been doing this festival for many, many years, but we are still limited [in what we can do] because of the funding situation from the Macau government, which is not adequate,” Ngai told the Times yesterday. “The funding was much better last year and this year it has been much tighter. They [the government] didn’t explain to us why [this is the case].”

Mutual trade and investment interest between the countries of East Asia and Latin America has been on the agenda of Pacific-facing countries for years, culminating in the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which stalled in early 2016.

Beijing has been no exception, looking to expand ties with the southern American continent via its Belt and Road Initiative and viewing Macau as a device to furthering relations with Brazil, the richest and most populous of the Portuguese-speaking countries.

Ngai believes that local government resources are being diverted to develop cultural projects to which Macau is not naturally suited. He wants Macau to play to its strengths and tap into its Chinese-Latin heritage.

“People in the government want Macau to compete with Hong Kong. In what way can we compete with Hong Kong? We need our own identity and to use that to build our own cultural events,” he said.

For example, “there is already the Hong Kong film festival. Why do we need to duplicate this in Macau? We spend a lot of money on that, but nothing on what we can do that Hong Kong cannot. We should not compete with Hong Kong or Guangzhou, but do our own thing. That’s where our money should be going.”

“People always forget that we are different from the other cities in the Greater Bay Area; there are things only we have in this region. One of those things is our link to Latin heritage.”

Ngai also said that the Cultural Affairs Bureau, under the leadership of former chief Ung Vai Meng, had supported the festival and the building of a Sino-Latin identity in Macau. But today, he warned, the support is waning.

“Where are our really good Chinese-Portuguese translators in business, culture, politics and so on? I mean really good ones. My feeling is that there is a lot less nowadays than in the pre-handover years. And what about Spanish-Chinese translators? How do we establish Latin America relations without these skills?”

This year’s Latin American Cultural Festival, the seventh of its kind, will feature an array of cultural activities from cooking demonstrations to photo exhibitions and culture seminar activities.

In honor of the “2018 Macau Year of Gastronomy” – a government initiative to promote Macau’s recent designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy – this year’s program includes a gourmet food festival as well as Latin American wine classes.

A series of 12 films from Latin America will be screened, the majority of which won awards at various international film festivals in previous years. There is also a Latin American culture seminar series, featuring highlight talks on the countries of Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina and Cuba.