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News > Latin America

Brazil: Heart-Wrenching Effort To Salvage National Museum Items

  • An aerial view of Brazil's National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

    An aerial view of Brazil's National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. | Photo: Reuters

Published 12 September 2018
Opinion

Egyptian mummies; Luzia, the oldest skeleton ever found in Latin America; and research on Indigenous languages were lost to the fire.

A group of museum studies students at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which oversaw the management of Brazil's National Museum, have teamed up to recover as much archival material as possible to show the love people had for the institution.

RELATED: 
Brazil: Indigenous Head Likens Museum Fire to European Invasion

One of those students, Luana Santos, said their efforts are meant to "to show the affection that people had for the museum." Since the Sept. 2 fire, which destroyed some 90 percent of the museum's archive, the students have been gathering photos and videos of missing items, as well as selfies taken by visitors to the vast archive in an attempt to salvage what was lost.

The appeal for photos and video went worldwide and has received about 14,000 replies. Written recollections and even drawings of favorite exhibitions were sent back to the students, according to The Guardian.

“(The response) shows the importance of the archive, not just a place of research and history, but as part of people’s lives,” said Santos. 

Egyptian mummies; Luzia, the oldest skeleton ever found in Latin America; and an irreplaceable collection of Indigenous artifacts and research on Indigenous languages were lost to the fire. A total of 20 million items were lost as a result of the fire.

Laurentino Gomes, the author of a historical work on the Portuguese imperial court's arrival in Brazil, contended that the museum's loss took place during a critical time in Brazil's history, as calls for a return to a military dictatorship, recession, violent crime and political disenchantment take hold of the country.

The fire and destruction of the museum occurred during a historical turning point "as if it were a moment of psychoanalysis. The museum is a symbol of all of this, of who we were."

Jose Urutau, an Indigenous leader of the Guajajara ethnic group, linguist and researcher, went much further in his condemnation, saying that the fire caused an "irreparable loss" to Indigenous cultures comparable "to the European invasion in 1500."

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