Henry Ford's Folly

Latin Trade, Jan, 2001 by Mary A. Dempsey, Andrew Downie

Will the automotive pioneer's failed rubber plantations bring tourists to the Brazilian rain forest?

ALONG, COOL LANE LEADS TO CLAP-board houses where dark green shutters block the baking sun. Tidy lawns explode with flowers; pine trees lend aromatic shade. Fire hydrants bearing the stamp of a Michigan manufacturer poke up from concrete sidewalks.

It looks like a Great Lakes community of summer cottages--except that these houses are tucked deep in Brazil's Amazon jungle. This town, Belterra, and its even more remote sister, Fordlandia, are what's left of auto pioneer Henry Ford's bid to become a rubber baron.

Seeking to break a Dutch-Asian rubber cartel in the 1920s, Ford convinced Brazilian officials that he could spark a rubber boom like the one that fueled their economy in the 1800s. On 2.5 million acres in the Amazon, the auto magnate erected rubber plantations in Brazil, where previously only wild rubber was tapped. The experiment was a colossal flop and, for six decades, Brazilian officials scratched their heads over what to do with the settlements. Until now.

The future of the plantation town of 15,300 residents, says Chardival Pantoja, a 60-year-old Belterra native, is tourism. "There is a great potential here. Two thirds of the Tapajos National Forest is inside the municipal boundary That's about 400,000 hectares," says Pantoja, Belterra's secretary of tourism and environment. "It is beautiful. Spectacular."

He recites the flora and fauna offerings and notes that the area has "45 kilometers of beaches--fresh water that is sometimes bright blue and sometimes emerald green," Adding color to any tourism promotion is, of course, the U.S. history.

When Ford cut his deal with Brazil, he had never even visited the South American country But he negotiated an arrangement that gave him the land, as well as police protection and duty-free entry of all Ford equipment and supplies. In exchange, the auto magnate promised to return 9% of the operation's profits to the local and national governments after 12 years.

In August 1928, cargo-laden barges steamed out of Michigan. Four months later, they unloaded on the malarial shore of the Tapajos River, leaving motorboats, a steam shovel, a pile driver, tractors, stump pullers, a locomotive, ice-making machines and crates of food, along with prefabricated buildings and a disassembled sawmill. Ford's new firm, Companhia Industrial do Brasil, picked a hilly riverside spot known as Boa Vista--Portuguese for "good view"--and rechristened it Fordlandia.

Fordlandia stood as a modern enclave fenced in by jungle. Power lines running from a diesel generator fed rows of snug bungalows. The main street was paved and residents collected well water from spigots in front of their homes--except for the U.S staff and white-collar Brazilians, who had running water in their homes and splashed in separate outdoor pools. Everybody frequented an area known as Villa Brasileira, where a tailor made suits and a shoemaker repaired footwear while the aroma of fresh bread wafted from the bakery.

Fordlandia fails. Eventually, however, Fordlandia's uneven terrain eroded and collected stagnant water, breeding malaria-carrying mosquitoes. During the dry season, from July to November, the river dropped as much as 40 feet, leaving the dock too low for boats to approach. Hot, humid temperatures scared away transplanted Michigan managers, while ants, mites and leaf disease attacked the trees. Fordlandia was a failure.

But Ford would not give up. In 1934, Companhia Industrial do Brasil swapped part of the concession for 703,750 acres 100 miles farther north along the Tapajos, and Belterra was born. The promise of free housing and food, top-notch health care and a salary equivalent to 37 U.S. cents a day--double the going rate--drew seringuerios, or rubber workers.

In 1942, Belterra produced its biggest yield: 750 tons of rubber, far below Ford's 38,000-ton projection. Three years later, the automaker announced it would sell the concession--a US$20 million investment--back to Brazil for $250,000. "Our war experience has taught us that synthetic rubber is superior to natural rubber for certain of our products," the automaker said at the time.

In the decades that followed. successive schemes to revive Belterra failed. A glove factory opened but was quickly relocated to Santarem. A research station for plant experiments, including the grafting of oranges, was based at Belterra for a stretch. There was also a failed bid to open a condom factory and an unsuccessful effort to start an agricultural school amid the cluster of workshops and schools at the abandoned plantation.

Today, the town has installed electricity full-time after years of on-again, off-again power systems. Farm machinery, a novelty, has been brought in to help local subsistence farmers with plowing and harvesting. "The jungle has been cut and residents have returned to agriculture, meaning beans, rice, corn, manioc and citrus fruit," says Steven Alexander, owner of Amazon Turismo, a nature-oriented travel agency that runs occasional historical tours to Belterra. "In the last couple of years, the planting of soy beans has become the fad."