Fordlandia & 20th-Century Colonialism in the Amazon Rainforest

In the early 20th century, the Amazon rainforest witnessed one of the bloodiest periods in its history, its rubber trees exploited to extract the precious latex needed to feed the demands of industrialization. To do so, indigenous communities were enslaved and tortured by merchants, who used them as a cheap workforce. In the late 1920s, this unique commercial opportunity caught the attention of US industrialist and business magnate Henry Ford, who unsuccessfully established a settler colony in the region to supply his business—and satisfy his moral desires.

Henry Ford was born in 1863 in Springwells Township, Michigan, and died in 1947 at his Fair Lane, Michigan residence. He is known as the founder of the Ford Motor Company and the pioneer of the production model that made automobiles affordable for the workers producing them. Ford invented a mass production or chain production system called Fordism. In this assembly-line production, each worker was responsible for completing one task in the assembly process, contrary to one individual handcrafting the whole product. This system changed the world and drove Henry Ford’s success. It became the basis of the production and consumption models of modern industrialism and labor markets around the globe. Ford believed consumerism was the key to achieving peace in the world by improving workers’ living conditions, hiring low-skilled workers, and reducing working hours.

Fordlandia: A Midwest Colony in the Amazon

After learning about the “rubber fever” already on the decline in the Amazon rainforest, Ford decided he wanted not only to create a direct commercial link to a rubber supply for his cars in the jungle but also to regain the monopoly over rubber production that the British had won when taking control of plantations in Malaysia, previously under Japanese control. Rubber merchants in the Amazon had lost their business monopoly when botanist and explorer Henry Wickman secretly exported the seeds to Britain. Ignoring that this had destroyed the Brazilian rubber market, Ford directly negotiated with the governor of Pará to establish his dream city. The governor granted him around 2.5 million acres of land, plus exemptions from paying taxes in exchange for giving the government a small percentage of the total profit.

Ford, then in his 60s, designed the city as a home for managers coming from the US, replicating the atmosphere of the Midwest from his childhood memories. He wanted to construct a replica of an “American-style” village and institute an “American” way of living. The houses were designed in Michigan and then built alongside concrete sidewalks with red hydrants. The city was adapted for the use of cars for entertainment and also included a golf course, tennis courts, cinemas, and swimming pools, as well as a local hospital designed by renowned architect Albert Kahn. Its main road was dubbed Palm Avenue.

Ford wanted to create a social and economic system that would not only provide his business with precious rubber but would function as his version of a social utopia. He forbade the consumption of alcohol and encouraged people to read poetry. Armed men used to exert sanitary control over the village by killing street dogs and searching for people with undesirable diseases. The US managers dedicated their leisure time to gardening, golf, and country dance.

Greg Grandin, author of the book “The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City” and son of one of the construction engineers who worked for Henry Ford, explains that Ford wanted to impose not only a system of production that exploited the land but foreign cultural and culinary practices as well. Strict rules to maintain social order were imposed in Fordlandia. Workers were mistreated and forced to work long hours exposed to intense sunlight, humidity, and heat.

The project faced numerous challenges from the beginning. Managers from the US were not used to local conditions and were unprepared for the environment and agriculture. There are reports that some of the managers suffered mental health crises and even drowned in the river. Despite the millions of dollars invested, the rubber tree plantations failed due to Ford’s ignorance. They were planned and executed as a single-crop plantation, with the trees planted too close to one another. Ford failed to consult the appropriate experts on local agriculture and ignored the fact that rubber trees naturally grow separately, protecting them from different kinds of infestation.

More importantly, despite Ford’s claims to be establishing a “utopia,” the indigenous workers were mistreated, leading to a revolt known as quebra-panelas (breaking pans) in 1930. During the riot, people were heard shouting, “Brazil for the Brazilians, let’s kill all the Americans,” prompting some of the managers to escape to the jungle. An article from NPR about Ford’s ultimate failure to construct his utopian city states, “Henry Ford didn’t just want to be a maker of cars – he wanted to be a maker of men.” Ford believed he could create a small society based on mass production and consumption.

The project ultimately collapsed because of the conflict between Ford’s ideals and the mechanized lifestyle he promoted, and indigenous practices of coexisting with the land. The project was so unsuccessful that “not one drop of latex from Fordlandia ever made it into a Ford car.” In fact, from the 38,000 tons of latex Ford was expecting to extract to supply his US factories, only 750 were successfully produced.

Once hopeful that Henry Ford would visit them one day, the local workers and residents gave up and abandoned the village. In 1945, the village was returned to the Brazilian government; although it tried to make the town productive again, it fell into unavoidable decay. Two years later, on April 7, 1947, Ford died at age 83 at his residence in Michigan.

After workers abandoned the village, looters stole every object left behind by the US company, even the doorknobs. A recent exploration of the site, which was covered by The New York Times, revealed that the area is currently inhabited by some 2,000 people, living in constructions built almost a century ago that are nearly in ruins. Some were born locally and are the descendants of rubber workers. They have small plots of land dedicated to livestock farming or cassava plantations on the fields that were once destined for rubber exploitation.

Fordlandia is a clear example of modern settler exploitative white colonialism. Ford’s initial intentions were focused on productivity and resources, combined with his dreams of creating an artificial micro-society that copied US culture and reflected his ideals about what modern living should look and feel like. His production and lifestyle models were replicated worldwide, creating the basis for a new social structure that privileges consumption, exploitation, and work over ecological relationships between humans and their environments. During the years Fordlandia was active, journalists framed the project as a titanic fight between nature and modern mankind. Going even further, The Washington Post stated that Ford was bringing the “magic of white men to the world of savages.”

It is also noteworthy that this significant failure occurred in the Amazon rainforest, the place with the most extraordinary biodiversity in the world and home to many indigenous communities that understand life in the jungle. The stories of settler colonialism and exploitation did not start with Ford; the forest had been threatened and damaged by quinoa and rubber markets since the 19th century and even today faces deforestation produced by soya plantations and extensive livestock farming. Despite this, the cultural-biological world of the Amazon endures, demonstrating how the natural rhythms of the environment continue to resist the predatory interests of capitalism.

Despite Fordlandia’s failure, Ford’s legacy continued in the region until 2021, when then-president Jair Bolsonaro ordered the closure of three Ford factories in Brazil. This led to the loss of more than 5,000 jobs and the ultimate breakup of the economic alliance that started with Henry Ford’s colonization project. Fordlandia reflects the paradoxes of industrialization and the need to preserve nature and demonstrates how, shielded by market and production logic, foreign worldviews are imposed over traditional ones.