Fordlândia: The Dearborn Carmaker’s Amazon Folly

Pioneering American industrialist Henry Ford built his first commercial automobile in 1901, and went on in the years following to revolutionise the motor vehicle industry with his eponymous Model T Ford and his innovative assembly line production techniques✲. With the advent of Fordism (a system involving modern technological machinery and standardised production in high volumes) Ford was paying his auto industry employees an (at the time) unprecedented $5 a day! However it came with very consequential strings (a dehumanisation of the workplace and the loss of workers’ individual autonomy).

By the 1920s Ford was pursuing a plan to harness the waters of the Tennessee River to power a proposed 75-mile long mega-city, which the car-maker proclaimed would be a “new Eden” in northwest Alabama. A concerted campaign by political opponents within the US however blocked Ford’s efforts to get the scheme off the ground ‘[‘Valley of Visions’, (Adam Bruns), Site Selection Magazine, May 2010, www.siteselection.com]. Vexated but undaunted, Ford turned to the remote Amazon jungle for his next big project.

The rubber market and “latex gold” Rubber was in high demand by car manufacturers like Ford and his American rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Rubber is the source of latex, which is vulcanised to create car tyres and for a range of other vehicle parts (eg, valves, gaskets, hoses, electrical wiring). The problem for Ford and other manufacturers was that the European colonial powers, France, the Netherlands and (especially) Britain, had an established monopoly on the production of rubber through their profitable South-East Asian colonies (Malaysia, the East Indies, Vietnam, Ceylon). Ford was particularly concerned that the British, spearheaded by its secretary for colonial affairs Winston Churchill, was intent on creating a rubber cartel to further monopolise the valuable product for the Europeans. The industrialist therefore was looking round for a cheaper way of sourcing rubber…he briefly considered planting rubber trees in the Florida Everglades but that didn’t turn out to be promising. His focus eventually fixed on Brazil and its vast Amazon Basin (see also the Footnotes).

Eyes on Brazil From 6,000 km away in Ford’s Dearborn  car ‘empire’ headquarters, the Amazon looked a logical location for a rubber plantation. It was after all the original (and therefore seemingly the natural) environment for producing latex, being the home of the plant Hevea brasiliensis, used to make the most elastic and purest form of latex!

Ford’s idealistic and ideological vision Clearly Henry Ford saw the long-term business advantages of securing a consistent supply of latex at the most favourable prices, but in his public pronouncements he let it be known that he viewed the Brazilian project as something grander than an attempt to corner a resource market  – “a civilising mission” no less! Ford regularly couched his intervention in Amazonia in terms of it being an act of “benevolence to help that wonderful and fertile land” [‘Lost cities #10: Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford’s utopian city in the Amazon’, (Drew Reed), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2016, www.theguardian.com]. While some of the car manufacturer’s overblown utterances may have been an indulgence in PR, the Amazonian venture (and the fact that he persisted with it long, long past its use-by-date) suggests that the idea of Fordlândia represented something in his core that was deeply idealistic. Greg Grandin in his epic study of the Fordlândia experiment, has noted that despite the runaway success of his Detroit-based business empire, Ford had become increasingly disatisfied with modern American society and culture as he saw it, there was a whole catalogue of things that he abhorred…including war, unions, alcohol, cigarettes, cow’s milk(!), modern dance, Wall Street financiers, Jews, the creeping intervention of government into business and into American life as a whole [Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, (2010)].

A blinkered idealism Ford saw in the challenge of carving a viable city out of the Brazilian wilderness, a potential antidote to all he disliked about his homeland – a way to recreate “a vision of Americana that was slipping out of his grasp at home” [ibid.]. Another driver in Ford’s Amazonian quest was the unflinching faith in his capacity to replicate the Dearborn business success elsewhere, including the Amazon jungle. This idealism led Ford, even when things went “pear-shaped” in Fordlândia “to deliberately reject the expert advice” and blindly cling to his peculiarly personal notion of trying “to turn the Amazon into the Midwest of his imagination” [ibid.]. Moreover, Grandin notes, that the greater the reverses of  Henry’s rubber enterprises in the Amazon, the more the carmaker would describe his ‘mission’ in Brazil in idealistic terms – Fordlândia would, he stressed repeatedly, bring economic stability and increases in the standard of life to the impoverished people of the Brazilian interior; the new city would support 10,000 people, etc [ibid.].

Initially, the government and it seems, the Brazilian people in the main, welcomed Ford’s Amazonian industrial city. Brazilian officials, especially consul José de Lima, went to great pains to woo the American carmaker once his interest in the Amazon became known. Some Brazilian officials even heaped overly-lavish, religiously evocative praise on Ford , calling him the “Jesus Christ of Industry”, the “Moses of the Twentieth Century” and “the salvation of Brazil’s long-moribund rubber industry” [ibid.].

By the terms of the business deal, Ford would pay the Brazilian government about US$125,000 for 5,625 square miles of land and the company was to be exempt from taxes✣. Under the concessions Ford’s city was to be granted an autonomous bank, police force and schools, to many observers it was a violation of Brazilian sovereignty…”it was as if Ford had the right to run Forlândia as a separate state”. The sceptical Santarém (local) press mockingly referred to the Dearborn (Michigan) car manufacturer as “São Ford” (“St Ford”) [ibid.].

The blueprint for Fordlândia Ford poured a massive amount of resources into his (new) utopian ‘dream’ city. The plant was equipped with “state-of-the-art” processing facilities. No expense was spared on constructing the American village (known locally as Vila Americana) which was reserved for American management. It was equipped with a swimming pool, a golf course, tennis courts, a library, schools and a hospital. Not surprisingly, the de luxe conditions of the Americans’ village was in grotesque contrast with that of the Brazilian workers whose rudimentary houses lacked even running water [ibid.].

Setbacks and drawbacks The jungle site picked out for Ford’s prefabricated industry town was Aveiro on the River Tapajós, in the state of Pará.  From the get-go in 1928 things did not go well! First off, clearing the dense jungle for the site was really hard (and dangerous) work✪…even with Ford’s promise to pay high wages to the locals, labour was in short supply. The project’s logistics provided another headache, the location’s communications and transportation had serious shortcomings, The location was hilly and there were no roads to Aveiro so movement was by boat up and down the river, and seasonal climatic conditions tended to impede access (also latter on hindering the cargo vessels trying to reach Fordlândia to load up the latex).

“Agri-ignorance” The task of planting rubber trees was thoroughly error-ridden. Ford’s managers used antiquated planting techniques, the team lacked basic knowledge of tropical agriculture. A fundamental flaw that proved critical was the company’s  practice (ignoring the advice of Brazilian botanists) of planting the rubber trees too close to each other, this resulted in making the plantings susceptible to disease (enabling the destructive South American leaf blight to move easily from tree to tree) [ibid.].

Illness caused by the harsh tropical location wreaked havoc with the work force (especially the migrant workers but also affecting the American staff). Workers went down with various ailments (malaria, VD, yellow fever, beriberi, parasites, snake bites, etc) placing a strain on the already overwhelmed company health services [ibid.].

Subverting worker morale Ford imposed strict conditions of behaviour on the work force – in keeping with his personal puritanical code. A prohibition ban was imposed (to match the prevailing injunction on alcohol in the US at the time). In light of the severely harsh conditions they were working under, Ford’s “absolutely no tolerance” liquor policy was totally unrealistic⊡. Workers were forced to endure a regime of rigid conformity – regimentation of plantation life, adhering to strict standards of discipline and hygiene. And to make things even more onerous, Ford introduced the same, notorious heavy-handed yolk of enforcement he employed in the River Rouge automobile plant in Detroit. Ford’s “Big Brother” like Service Department men were employed to carry out highly intrusive spot searches on workers’ quarters to ensure compliance with the edicts.

Americanisation overkill Ford insisted that the migrant workers at Fordlândia adhere to Americanised conditions of work and services which ignored the local realities and cultural norms. This meant everyone got American-style housing with metal roofs which were conductors of the already intense tropical heat (in preference to the more sensible natural thatch roofs they were used to in Brazil). Another “First World” error by Ford was to build workers’ houses close to the ground…the locals in the Amazon knew to build high up on stilts so that they didn’t get overrun with animals and insects! Ford was insistent on interfering with the Brazilians’ diets, workers were fed unfamiliar food like hamburgers, whole-wheat bread and unpolished rice, and they were encouraged to plant flowers and vegetables on their plots. The American managers, with scant regard for the workers, forced them to work in the middle of the day in full tropical sun. Inevitably, the migrant workers staged a revolt against the management practices, known as Quebra-Panelas (the “Breaking Pans”). They rioted in late 1930, protesting against Ford’s imposed conditions, and the Brazilian army had to intervene to restore order (with management making some concessions with regard to the food) [ibid.].

Erratic managerial direction Part of the problem with Fordlândia was with the management. They’re was a rapid turnover of managers in the first two years of the settlement.  Ford’s often wrong-headed policies were not easy to implement, but some managers were not up to the task and others just couldn’t hack it in the extremely challenging and arduous Amazon and quit. Unsurprisingly, with mismanagement morale plummeted, the American staff increasingly engaged in wild parties and drunken revelry.  It wasn’t until Scot Archibald Johnston was put in charge at the end of 1930 that progress started to be made at Fordlândia.  Johnston was able to improve the infrastructure, enhance the lifestyles of employees’ – new entertainments and recreations – film and dance nights, gardening, football games (overturning Ford’s earlier ban) and more education options. Grandin feels that under Johnston’s management, the city “came closest to Ford’s original ideal”. But still the yields of latex didn’t come remotely close to the company’s anticipated returns.

With the lack of commercial success, the original Brazilian government enthusiasm for Ford’s project waned badly. Even from the start there had been critics of the done deal that was vague on many details and required Ford to use only 40 % of his land grant for the production of latex♉. Eventually, there was a loss of credibility for Fordlândia – with the situation showing little improvement, the Brazilian middle classes ultimately could not square Ford’s “self-promoted reputation for rectitude and efficiency” with the reality of the plantation’s dismal track record [ibid.]

FN 1: British ‘Bio-piracy’ The European monopoly on rubber had its origins in the unscrupulous actions of British botanist Henry Wickham who clandestinely pilfered Hevea seeds out of the Amazon in the late 19th century. These were propagated successfulyl in Asia✧, putting the three colonial powers in a frontline advantageous economic position in the trade. The sale of latex, especially to the US auto industry which needed rubber for the expansion of the burgeoning industry, helped Great Britain and France pay off its (WWI) war debts [Grandin, op.cit.].

FN 2: The “latex lords” Before the rise of the Asian rubber plantations, Brazil was the dominant world supplier…in the second half of the 19th century, processed rubber accounted for 40% of Brazil’s total exports. The Amazon’s big towns, Manaus and Belem, profited spectacularly from the rubber boom as witnessed by the magnificent BeauxArts palaces and grand neoclassical municipal buildings that sprang up. By the early 1920s however, the country’s rubber industry had bottomed out and Brazil was bankrupt [ibid.]. ••••——••——•••——••——•••——••———••——•••——••——••——••——•••———••——••——•••• ✲ so successful that the Ford Motor Company had captured over half the US auto sales market by 1921 ✧ rubber cultivation thrived in South-east Asia due to a combination of factors – the parasites (insects and fungi) that feed off the rubber in Brazil were not present; the cross-breeding of trees led to increased yields of sap. The plantations were close to ports (cf. Brazil), reducing the transportation costs. Lastly, the cost of labour (principally derived from China) was significantly lower [Grandin, op.cit.]

✣ as it transpired, the deal was not as great as the Detroit carmaker thought …”swindled by a Brazilian con artist” Ford paid around three-times the value of the land [G Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, (2005)]

 ✪ a hardship compounded by the company providing the clearers with very poor housing conditions ⊡ and impossible to fully enforce…plantation workers got round the prohibitions (Ford’s ‘puritanism’ extended to bans on women in the town, on smoking and on the playing of football as well) by establishing illicit bars, nightclubs and brothels on the so-called “Island of innocence”, [‘Fordlândia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org] ♉ leading some Brazilians to speculate that Ford’s real motives for intervening were to seek oil, gold and political leverage [Grandin, op.cit.].