Abrar Hussain: The devastating fire that destroyed Brazil’s historical and most important museum has been attributed to funding cuts and inadequate maintenance.
The blaze at the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro began at about 7.30pm local time and raged into the night. Although there were no reports of injuries, senior staff has described the loss to Brazilian science, history and culture as ‘incalculable’.
Brazil’s culture minister, Sérgio Leitão, siad that the blaze was likely caused by either an electrical short-circuit or a homemade, paper hot-air balloon that may have landed on the roof.
While the cause of the blaze is still under investigation, government cuts and inadequate fire protection systems have been cited as key factors. Rio’s fire chief, Roberto Robaday, tsaid the two hydrants nearest the museum were dry, delaying efforts to douse the flames.
In recent years, the government has spent billions on the Olympics and major construction projects that generated kickbacks for politicians, but slashed spending on culture and education in the name of austerity.
The museum was home to Egyptian and Graeco-Roman artefacts, fossils, dinosaurs and 12,000-year-old “Luzia” – the oldest human skeleton in the Americas. But perhaps the greatest blow is the likely destruction of indigenous artifacts, which showed how millions of people lived in pre-colonial times.
The flames were extinguished by Monday morning, allowing museum directors to survey the smoldering ruins.
As the day progressed, more people tried to enter the park to get a glimpse of its burned husk, and police at one point fired teargas into a small, angry crowd of protesters who had gathered outside the park’s entrance.
“This is the greatest loss of indigenous writing in Latin America. Our memory has been erased,” said José Urutau Guajajara, who studied his community’s history at the museum.
Mércio Gomes, an anthropologist and a former president of Brazil’s indigenous agency, Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai), compared the loss to the burning of the Library of Alexandria in 48BC.
“We Brazilians have only 500 years of history. Our National Museum was 200 years old. Our memory is small, but that’s what we had, and it is lost forever,” he wrote on Facebook. “We have to reconstruct our National Museum.”
-Source: The Guardian