Brazilians see disaster as metaphor for national failings
RIO DE JANEIRO » Firefighters dug through the burned-out hulk of Brazil’s National Museum on Monday, a day after flames gutted the building, as the country mourned the irreplaceable treasures lost and pointed fingers over who was to blame.
The museum held Latin America’s largest collection of historical artifacts, and the damage was feared to be catastrophic. One official told a Brazilian news outlet that as much as 90 percent may have been destroyed. Some parts of the collection were stored at other sites.
For many in Brazil, the state of the 200-year-old natural history museum quickly became a metaphor for what they see as the gutting of Brazilian culture and life during years of corruption, economic collapse and poor governance.
“It’s a crime that the museum
was allowed to get to this shape,” said Laura Albuquerque, a 29-year-old dance teacher who was in a crowd protesting outside the gates. “What happened isn’t just regrettable, it’s devastating, and politicians are responsible for it.”
The cause of the fire that broke out Sunday night was not known. Federal police
will investigate since the museum was part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
But protesters, commentators and museum directors said years of government neglect had left the museum so underfunded that its staff had to turn to crowdfunding sites to open exhibitions.
Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, the museum’s deputy director, criticized authorities for starving the museum of vital funding while spending lavishly on stadiums to host the World Cup in 2014.
“The money spent on each one of those stadiums — a quarter of that would have been enough to make this museum safe and resplendent,” he said in front of the ruins.
Roberto Leher, rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said it was wellknown that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repairs.
Duarte said he unplugged everything in his office at night because of the risk.
Civil defense authorities were concerned that internal walls and the roof could collapse further, so officials had to wait to conduct a full accounting of losses.
Duarte said that anything held in the main building likely was destroyed.
Cristiana Serejo, a vice director of the museum, told the G1 news portal that as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived.
Brazil has struggled to emerge from a two-year recession and has seen its political and corporate elite jailed in Latin America’s largest corruption investigation. The country has been riven with deep political divisions since the impeachment and removal of former President Dilma Rousseff.
“This fire is what Brazilian politicians are doing to the people,” said Rosana Hollanda, a 35-year-old high school history teacher, who was crying. “They’re burning our history, and they’re burning our dreams.”
Signs of disrepair were evident: The fencing was dilapidated, stonework was cracked, and lawns appeared untended.
The museum’s budget had fallen from around $130,000 in 2013 to around $84,000 last year, according to Marcio Martins, a spokesman for the museum.
This year was on track to include an increase from last year.
In a sign of how strapped the museum was, when a termite infestation last year forced the closure of a room that housed a 13-yard-long dinosaur skeleton, officials turned to crowdfunding to reopen the room.
The institution had recently secured approval for nearly $5 million for a renovation, including an upgrade of the fire-prevention system, officials said.
“Look at the irony. The money is now there, but we ran out of time,” museum Director Alexander Kellner said at the scene.
President Michel Temer announced Monday that private and public banks, as well as mining giant Vale and state-run oil company Petrobras, have agreed to help rebuild the museum and reconstitute its collections.