November 27, 2009Fordlândia: Failure in the Amazon

Deep in the Brazilian rain forest, Henry Ford, the revolutionary who crafted the Model T automobile and created the modern assembly line, attempted to bring his brand of industrial utopia to the Amazon.  Fordlândia, as the plantation that Ford established in 1920s South America came to be known, was intended to provide Ford’s North American operations with a direct supply of a critical vehicular component that had erstwhile come from British colonial Malaya: rubber.

This somewhat grounded and logical vision did not, however, account for the majority of the motivation behind Fordlândia (at least according to Greg Grandin, the preeminent author on the subject). Instead, much of the thrust behind the project lay in Ford’s perception of Fordlândia as an enchanting opportunity to carve out raw land and build an infrastructure from scratch; the great 20th century industrialist had designs on creating a glorified version of small-town USA in the Amazon.  Ford worked with the Brazilian government to procure a tract of land approximately the size of Connecticut.

In a post WWI era, a disillusioned Ford yearned for the simple times of his childhood, but he underestimated the implausibility of his grandiose vision to construct Main Street USA in the Brazilian rain-forest.  While  Ford successfully managed to create a village that looked and felt a bit like the small town America of his youth (complete with Cape Cod-style homes and ice cream shoppes), the industry that he hoped would keep the town thriving proved problematic; so, too, did the conservative/Christian rules that he tried to impose (including a prohibition of alcohol and tobacco).

The plan to harvest rubber proved to be ill-conceived.  In the first place, the land was hilly, rocky, and largely infertile.  Furthermore, the rubber trees were situated too close together, enabling predators to infiltrate and cause severe damage to the crops.  Finally, the rules that Ford imposed together with the unfamiliar culture that he had exported from America and forced upon the indigenous workers resulted in a very disgruntled workforce.

When 1945 yielded synthetic rubber, thereby ending the need for naturally harvested rubber from trees, Fordlândia officially became defunct.  Ford sold the land at a tremendous loss and the project went down in history as one of Ford’s most disastrous ventures.

NOTE: Photo via Damn Interesting

For more information on Fordlândia, please check out the following: NPR, Wikipedia, Damn Interesting