We previously discussed the wisdom of Brazil spending billions on the 2016 Olympics when its country was struggling with serious economic and social problems including rampant corruption. Now, in a loss for the entire world, Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum has been reportedly gutted in a catastrophic fire. According to reports, the museum has begged the federal government for funding of the aging building, including the need for a fire prevention system.
The museum holds 20 million items that might now be lost. Politicians are of course expressing shock — the same politicians that spent wildly on the games while ignoring the greater priorities in places like the National Museum. They now have the largely unused and delapidated Olympic spaces and have lost much of their cultural history.
Marina Silva, a former environment minister and candidate in October’s presidential elections said the fire was like “a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory”. That procedure however may have started when Brazil blindly pitched Rio for the 2016 Olympics.
Not to mention that the bulk of the Olympic venues in Rio were built by displacing most of the very poor people in rhe city to outlying areas of even less economic opportunity.
I visited Rio’s wonderful “Museu Nacional” on every one of my visits to Brazil. This sad incident simply confirms the misguided political priorities that have historically plagued Brazil. It’s all about the big annual “Carnaval do Rio” and “A Copa Mundial do Futebol” and nothing else. What a shame that the reasonable cost of the fire prevention system was always left for “amanha” (tomorrow). One has to wonder, however, if the fire was intentional. There are serious social grievances in Rio’s “favelas” (slums) that have not been addressed by the “politicos” in Rio and Brasilia.
Glenn Greenwald
Verified account @ggreenwald
now4 minutes ago
The horrific, still-incomprehensible destruction of Brazil’s National Museum has been replicated across all aspects of Brazilian life: health care, education, and basic life opportunities for tens of millions destroyed by a political class that has stolen on an astronomical scale
The homicide rate in Brazil is 5x that in the United States and 20x that in Western Europe. The country’s land titles are a mess. They’ve had some successes in recent decades, but it remains a very haphazardly governed country.
Chael said it all
What an unimaginably catastrophic loss for Brazil.
What I cannot wrap my head around is how the cultural treasure of an entire country was concentrated in one location without a fire protection system. It would have been safer spread out in people’s homes.
These works are irreplaceable. Will Brazilian politicians answer to her people?
That country needs some German migrants. They need energy and brains. And firemen.
Soon this will be what happens in the US. We don’t maintain anything.
Bad news for Brazil:
*National Museum burns to the ground
*Brazil breaks its own record of homicide in 2018, surpassing 63,880 people slain
Good news for Brazil:
Brazil’s Indian agency, FUNAI that suffered a 50% budget cut, is still protecting an indigenous man, the last of his tribe. This Indian is about 50 years old & referred to as the “man of the hole”. FUNAI rangers left him an axe & recorded the video.
Brazil’s indigenous laws are a mess, too. A surprising number of Brazil’s tribes have the custom of murdering children who are handicapped or don’t hit their milestones, often for reason which are able to be fixed by modern science or therapy. Twins or triplets are considered to have split souls and are also murdered. Unwanted girl children are at risk of murder. Pregnant women are expected to walk into the jungle alone to give birth, and to discard or kill the infant if it is unwanted, such as a daughter when they desired a son, if there is anything wrong, or for a number of reasons. The children are either buried alive in a hole or left in the jungle to die of thirst, starvation, or wild animals. Brazil passed laws that prevent anyone from rescuing the children. After a media uproar in which a couple did manage to save a little girl, they passed laws restricting access of non-indigenous people to the tribes in one of the most ill conceived acts of cultural relevance in modern times.
All that is needed is to simply explain to the tribes about programs such as speech therapy, or nutrition, or even foster care or adoption. However, a hands off approach was deemed most suitable. Children are being buried alive in the rain forest, and their miserable parents who refuse are supposed to commit suicide so that the next in line can murder their child who may be a late bloomer speaking or walking.
Havana wasn’t walking or talking by age 2. The tribe declared she had no soul, and ordered her parents to murder her. They could not, and committed suicide instead. It fell to her 15 year old brother to do it, so he dug a hole, knocked her out with a machete, and put her inside. But she woke up and he couldn’t go through with it. So her grandfather shot her with an arrow, which she again survived. He couldn’t hurt her again and so he tried, but failed, to commit suicide. Her brother abandoned her in the jungle with no food or water, with the wild animals. He couldn’t quite give up on his sister, however, and would occasionally sneak her food, all alone in the jungle. A Brazilian couple who was working with the tribe had to fight the government and go to the media before they were allowed to take her, after which they revised the law and prevented contact for most non tribal people. As it turns out, Hakani was just suffering from hypothyroidism, which affected her development. She goes to school now, but she could have been spared impairment and suffering if she had been given readily available medical care.
Look at the photos of what state their adopted daughter, Hakani, was in before the government stopped interfering with their efforts to save her. What a disgrace. This is an extreme example of what can go wrong with the far Left ideology of cultural relevance, with every single tradition of every single culture valued exactly the same as the freedom of the West, from female genital mutilation to infanticide.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1555339/Girl-survived-tribes-custom-of-live-baby-burial.html
The Brazilians could benefit from studying how the Dutch and later Papua New Guinean government addressed the homicidal cultural mores with the indigenous population. It took time yet the cultural / legal issue was eventually resolved.
but diversity is our greatest strength!
and all values are relative.
these criticisms of the noble savages suggest cultural bias!
And it’s every where. I visited a small museum in a town in Southern Oregon. Not the more famous one In Jacsonville, Oregon where they labled a .50 caliber Sharps cartridge as a .22 but over in the adjoining Illinois Valley town of Kerby. The locals had started a museum in the 60’s two major whoopsies.
1. Morgue copies of the old newspaper had been donated for historian research. in particular a column written by a local history buff that traced information back into the 1800s. Winding Trails by a Mr. Hobart.
2.A number of artifacts from locals had been donated on loan.
3. A recreation of an old original one room log cabin school had been reconstructed on the property. . Jump ahead about 20 years and he county had take it over. The newspapers trashed and burn without copies made, The pioneer items either junked or claimed as property of the museum ‘on loan’ had disappeared, 3 the log cabin schoo had been improved with a huge shelter shed as kit was now being listed as ‘the original.’
In rare items an old style mason jar found wired to a tree held the original mining claim papers for the Ling Poo Placer.From the Oregon Gold rush Days.
Moral is don’t let the government take over anything. Locals are much more trustworthy and less expensive.
Most of that stuff can be now be listed as irreplaceable.
So destroying statues to try and erase the past is not just a east coast past time. But the truism ring through loud and clear. those that forget the past are condemned by themselves to repeat it.
Which segues nicely into politics so now we have a new name for the cycle. Ocasioism. or even Ocasiasts. Only thing to do if they face up to it is find their professors and jack slap them into the next century.;
From reports they lost some historic art treasures. There is no excuse. The two hydrants closest to the museum were not working????
I don’t know how this happened. Was any art saved at all? Were there any efforts to put it out? And what was the cause? Arson or faulty wiring?
Karen S – Apparently, some art/treasures/artifacts were in a different building. So, I don’t know if 20 million is the entire collection spread over all the building or just that building. And, like every other disaster, some things will survive the fire, but will need to be cleaned. However, from the pictures I saw, unless it was stored in the basement, it is going to be toast or in bad shape.
A ritual suicide is in order.
Incompetence knows no bounds.