Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (review)

If there is time to read only one book on Brazil this Fall, this is the book. Historian Grandin presents a superbly researched analysis of the ill-fated attempt by Henry Ford to establish a rubber plantation site, together with a town, Fordlandia, on the Tapajos river, some 100 miles upstream from Santarem in central Amazonia. This experiment in commercial colonization turned out to be a total disaster. From the initiation of the project in 1927, when Ford decided that it was time to break European control over access to Asian rubber, the seeds of which had been illegally removed from the Amazon basin earlier, environmental and social conditions proved to be overwhelming. Ford's idea was to recreate a Dearborn-like replica of production, a plantation system of rubber trees lined in rows on areas cleanly deforested. What he and his advisors forgot, and did not inquire of the local mateiros, was that the natural scattered distribution of rubber trees in the forest offered protection from the predatory bugs, mites, caterpillars, ants, and especially leave-blight fungus, that were delighted to see the closed-canopy plantations as closely-spaced banquet sites. Utopian ideals met Amazonian reality in scenarios that allow the reader to wonder how things could have gone so badly wrong for so long.

Of course Ford, the brilliant industrialist who had calculated that it took 7,882 separate tasks to build a Model-T, and whose factory system had revolutionized output and minimized costs with the development of the production line, thought that it would be easy to establish a replica Midwestern town, with modern hospitals, schools, plumbing, tennis courts and a golf course in the Amazon. Additionally it was assumed that the moral code employed in Dearborn, Michigan, where unions and alcohol were banned, and where workers behaved properly, could be replicated in Brazil. Massive amounts of money would quickly establish all the requirements to produce huge quantities of rubber and thus benefit North American society. The installation of a factory whistle (of seven mile range) and the time-punch clock would, as in Dearborn, control the locally contracted labor force. Since the laborers were offered (with no choice!) breakfasts of oatmeal and canned peaches, and rice and whole-wheat bread for dinner, how could they not be healthy and happy, even if they had to wait in line, sweating in the asbestos-roofed concrete dining hall? When the majority of the laborers were taken ill with a host of diseases the company promptly provided anti-malarial and worming pills, again given in the waiting lines; little did the management, and maybe not even the sanitation squads, know that once out of the door, the recipients engaged in a contest to see who could spit them the farthest!

It soon became clear that there were significant differences between the conditions in Michigan, and Amazonia, not simply environmental but also social. The labor force became constantly unstable; once enough money had been made, most drifted off back to their original villages. After hacking the forest for six hours, most laborers headed for the bars and bordellos that rapidly sprang up around the town site. Adios prohibition! And resentment of the social controls soon turned into riots—destroying entire buildings and the whole vehicle fleet.

Some members of the management team were also less than helpful. Einar Oxholm, a Norwegian ship's captain appointed manager of Fordlandia who enjoyed his rum (in defiance of company policy) may have been honest, but he knew nothing at all about rubber cultivation or managing men on land. He left the graves of four of his children before returning to the United States. Two employees, a Scot and a German, officially went upriver in search of new rubber seeds, but their trip soon turned into a drunken riot. They marooned their cook on a deserted island before landing...