Prospero | Stealing history

“Museo” revisits Mexico’s notorious museum robbery

And makes a pointed statement about the value of national heritage

By Y.F.

IT WAS one of the most audacious heists in art history. On Christmas Eve 1985 125 Mayan, Aztec, Miztec and Zapotec artefacts were stolen from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Some suspected that it was the work of the KGB or the CIA, a gang of professional crooks from Guatemala or Colombia or a “psychotic millionaire cultist” who wanted to “gaze on the booty in solitude”, as a news report from the time put it. Across the country the populace watched aghast as newscasters relayed an official message warning them of the thieves, “enemies of their past and heritage”: “All Mexicans are called upon to rally against this act of shameful unpatriotic theft.”

“Museo”, a new film directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, reimagines these events (reminding the viewer that most of what they will see is a mere “replica of the original”). It has the feel of a thrilling caper but, more impressively, it captures the socio-political dimensions of the crime in a country where pride in cultural patrimony and the pre-Columbian past has often served as a unifying force. The museum is a place of pilgrimage for school children, and attracts around 3m visitors annually. Only Chichen Itza and Teotihuacan, two archaeological sites, see more footfall.

As a result, “Museo” differs from the average heist film in making the museum and the stolen items characters as important as the human protagonists. An opening scene makes use of archival footage from 1964 of the transport of a monolith of Tlaloc, an Aztec god of water, lightning and agriculture, from the village of Coatlinchán to the new museum in Mexico City, where it was to beautify the entrance. For centuries the stone statue had served as a spiritual and tourist attraction; when the national government decided to remove it, the local population was furious. Benjamín Wilson (Leonardo Ortizgris), one of the thieves and the film’s narrator, remarks that the stone statue had been stolen from the village, that the government did not ask “for forgiveness or permission, and all because they had to fill the new museum with old things.” The subsequent criminality was necessary, the comment seems to suggest, to raise the question of who really own the artefacts. “There is no preservation without plunder.”

While the heist involved a larger and more sordid cast of characters, the film focuses on Wilson and Juan Nuñez (Gael García Bernal), two students in their 30s still living at home (Mr Ruizpalacios changed the men’s names, but has retained many biographical details). They aspire to be a part of something greater than themselves, an experience that will elevate them above their prosaic suburban lives (the same is true of the young men who steal valuable books in “American Animals”, another new film). Having visited the museum many times, they are curiously captivated by the artefacts—Juan plans the robbery while he is working as a photographer in one of the museum’s Mayan galleries—and at first want only to possess them. The jade funerary mask of Pakal, the longest reigning Maya king, is a particularly transfixing object.

As he grudgingly prepares for festive celebrations with his extended family, Juan hears a news report that the museum will close over the holidays and immediately phones Benjamín. In a dreamlike sequence, they weave through its galleries—it is the first time the institution has allowed a major motion picture to be filmed there—opening the unalarmed glass cases and removing the items with both care and awe. Their escape plan is foiled when the guards, tipsy from festive liquor, lock them inside. As they make their way out through air shafts, Juan has a vision of Pakal: is he reprimanding them or showing them the way?

Juan is steadfast in his belief that he is a righteous steward of the nation’s history, but underestimates how difficult it is to keep some of the world’s rarest treasures hidden in bags at home. Rather than return them to their places of origin, the pair decides to travel across Mexico to try and unload the wares. In a memorable scene, they meet Frank Graves (played by a wise and wily Simon Russell Beale), a potential buyer. When Juan realises the artefacts may go to a Briton, he is incensed. “English? We’re giving our country’s jewels to a fucking Englishman? They’ll end up in the fucking British Museum!” Mexico’s ancient riches shouldn’t be in the National Museum of Anthropology, but they shouldn’t be in another country’s museum, either.

They eventually do bring the artefacts back to Mexico City, planning to leave them stashed in bags in the museum’s cloakroom. Juan, still under the spell of the jade death mask, decides to take it to its original case and is spotted by a security guard; Benjamín watches his arrest from afar. At the official ceremony celebrating the objects’ return in 1989, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico’s then president, said that the country had “recovered part of [its] injured pride” as “each of these objects brings us a message from our past, from ancient civilisations that forged an era of singular glory.” The moral of the film—and a lesson that Brazil is tragically learning—is that when it comes to cultural heritage, “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

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