Henry Ford’s impossible dream in the middle of the Brazilian jungle

Some time ago, the English explorer Henry Wickham had stolen seeds from Hevea brasiliensis for the British, the plant from which rubber is extracted, originally from the Amazon, and had taken away the exclusivity of its production from Brazil by allowing the appearance of plantations in Asia. Brazilian rubber had had its golden age from 1879 to 1912, but that was already history.

His new dream would be called Fordlandia and he would shape it in the image and likeness of a town in the American Midwest. She spared no expense. He bought 110,000 square kilometers of land from the Brazilian government – ​​which promoted this type of investment –, sent ships with equipment, materials and furniture, and began to build the town that, in his mind, would allow him to break the European rubber monopoly and leave from depending on imports to manufacture their cars.

The chosen location was a large jungle area in the state of Pará, on the banks of the Tapajos River, in the northern region of Brazil. The automotive businessman announced that his plantation would be revolutionary and, in addition, he promised that it would provide economic gains to the country and social progress to the native communities of the jungle. As journalist Simon Romero tells it, in an article in The New York Times, “Ford built a town in the style of the United States, to be inhabited by Brazilians who wanted to mold themselves to what he considered American values.”

There he built what was at the same time a factory, a workspace and a village for the workers. It had all the services and infrastructure of an American town. In the middle of the jungle, he installed prefabricated houses in Michigan, hospitals, schools, soccer fields, swimming pools and restaurants that served strictly “Yankee” food. Ford wanted to make that place a corner of the United States in the middle of the Amazon.

The heart of this entire complex was, of course, a factory for latex treatment, accompanied by several workshops. This nerve center was surrounded by three housing neighborhoods, where workers and managers of the Fordlandia project would live exclusively. The first of them, was intended for directors, consisted of eight villas and was a faithful reproduction of the bourgeois neighborhoods of Detroit; The second was that of the foremen, made up of large cement houses, and the third was made up of the aforementioned wooden houses, where the workers would stay.

But of course none of this huge project would make sense if the tree that would provide the precious rubber was not planted there. So, in 1928 70,000 Heveas brasiliensis were planted; in 1929, another 70,000, and in 1931, one million more.

It soon became apparent that there were a series of setbacks that were not foreseen. For starters, the terrain chosen was too steep, so the rubber trees were falling off and not absorbing enough water. Furthermore, since Ford did not want to entrust the plantation to a specialized agronomist, the plants produced very little latex, something that was completely aggravated when they fell victim to an infestation of native caterpillars, ants and moths.

Due to the same lack of qualified personnel to manage plantations in tropical climates, Heveas brasiliensis trees began to have more problems. It turns out that it was a species that grew very well in the wild, but that could not withstand cultivation and, since it did not have the shade that other trees provided in other conditions, and the undergrowth that conserved humidity, it deteriorated.

But that was not the only storm front that Ford and
his project suffered. While it is true that he paid very good wages, this was not enough to keep the local workers happy, since he had imposed labor standards that were incompatible with life in the jungle. For example, he demanded that the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule be strictly adhered to, without considering that the temperatures were so high in the mornings that it was impossible to work on the plantation.

There was more. The rules imposed by Ford forced everyone – from foremen to employees – to eat in the same premises built especially for that purpose and the menu available was not exactly to the liking of the locals. The only thing they were provided was processed food brought from the United States and according to the American palate, no traditional Brazilian dishes.

The discontent of the population increased with the passing of the days. Although they could have access to the different facilities that had been built in Fordlandia, such as schools, hospitals and sports fields, Ford’s desire to control everything made the atmosphere become oppressive. They were all forced to strictly follow the American lifestyle, with foreign hobbies and, as mentioned, the imposition of a diet strange to their tastes.

“Ford’s quest for utopia went even further: the so-called ‘sanitary squads’ that operated throughout the site killed stray dogs, drained puddles in which malaria-transmitting mosquitoes could multiply, and checked employees for diseases. venereal”, was described in the aforementioned article in The New York Times.

The Spartan regime established by Ford meant that it did not take long for the locals to seek an escape. This is how casinos, brothels and bars arose – despite the fact that the businessman, a recognized teetotaler, had expressly prohibited the consumption of alcohol in Fordlandia –, which caused clashes between those who used these establishments and the rest of the inhabitants who complied with the rules.

On the other hand, the managers that Ford had sent especially from the United States were never able to adapt to this new life in the middle of the jungle. One of them drowned in the Tapajós River, while the other decided to return to his country after three of his children died from tropical diseases.

All this was crowned by a fierce strike by the workers who, furious at the regime imposed on them, vandalized the factory and other establishments. Perhaps the most symbolic attack was the one they carried out by breaking the clocks on which they clocked in and out of work. But also, they cut off the electricity to the plantation and sang “Brazil for the Brazilians; Let’s kill all the Americans.” Frightened, some of the managers fled into the jungle.

Fordlandia was inhabited for almost two decades and cost the automobile magnate a fortune, who, despite giving it his name, never set foot there, fearful of contracting one of the “infernal” tropical diseases. In 1945, the Ford company definitively abandoned the place, leaving behind the great failure of its founder, whose truncated idea cost him losses of US$20 million (equivalent to US$200 million today).

Currently, just over 1,000 people live in this town, some of them descendants of workers from the Fordlandia project. They spend their days surrounded by crumbling buildings and vestiges of what once embodied Henry Ford’s impossible dream.

TEXT REPRODUCED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE.

CARLOS MANZONI – LA NACIÓN (ARGENTINA) – GDA

PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY EDITION OF EL TIEMPO.