by Looking up at the ceiling of the Paz theater in the old town of Belém I thought I could see pink river dolphins. Maybe he was in contact with heat stroke. It was not yet 9.30am and it was sweltering. It will soon be 35°C – with a temperature that “feels” above 40°C. The city, at the mouth of the Amazon, and just 1.5 degrees from the equator, is always sultry, but summer came early. I was seeing as much as possible before the heat came home around lunchtime.
Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, was beautified during the rubber boom between 1880 and 1912. There is grandeur everywhere, much of it weathered and worn. But the theater is particularly well preserved. Artists were smuggling in local guides. There were wavy mosaics in the foyer to symbolize the flowing river; frescoes depicted a native girl spurning European “science”; cherubs had the beautiful wings of jungle birds.
I had lunch at the old docks, built in 1909 with English iron. Next door, the Ver-o-Peso, the largest market in Latin America, is still a place to trade tropical fruits, meat and fish. I visited the blindingly white cathedral and the Cirio basilica, respectively restored and built during the Belle époque. The request of the rubber barons to be buried in the last church was refused – to get a foot in the door despite their sinful lives, the great wealth and slaves – but their surnames decorate the ceiling.
I really liked Belém, with its Portuguese tiled buildings, along the river, a mangrove park and scarlet ibises and iguanas. But I had come in search of a human story – and not near the Atlantic but deep in the forest, down one of the tributaries of the Amazon. I came to visit the former rubber town of Fordlândia.
Why? Mainly curiosity. But the destruction of the Amazon is one of the great tragedies of our time. There may be insights to be gained from past attempts to colonize it. I have recently returned to live in my native Lancashire, and have seen many industrial ruins. They are sad, nostalgic, evocative – and they are important to people, and history.
Henry Ford decided to establish a rubber plantation in Brazil in 1928, retooling his production lines to make the Model A, which he hoped would compete with the new cars being made by the upstart General Motors. Firestone dominated rubber in Liberia. Dunlop and other British firms dominated Malaya. Ford went to the source: the Hevea brasiliensis tree. He would build a town near the Rio Tapajós. He would send ships and his best men. He would pay local fastidious wages. By the end of 1929, thousands of seedlings had been planted. After that, it all got a bit complicated.
Discover Belterra
From Belém I flew an hour west to Santarém, another riverside steam town, with a wedding cake chapel, market, ferry port and fish restaurants. Since 2003, it has been the local base for Cargill, the American firm headquartered in Minnesota that has turned millions of acres of Amazon rainforest into dusty soybean fields.
Before going to Fordlândia the local guide and driver Paulo visited me to visit a later development. Plant pathologist James Weir proposed Belterra, mainly so he could take credit for a new venture. I didn’t expect much. I knew it would not be successful as a commercial venture. I knew how the Amazon weather reduced and reduced buildings. But, thanks to conservation efforts and the quality of the original construction, much of the old town was in good shape.
The houses on Number One Street – also known as “salaried workers’ street” – had smart gables, shaded verandas, beautiful gardens, and their clapboards were still painted in white and green – like those built by Ford in company towns in Michigan. The Upper Peninsula.
At the small Belterra museum I met Antonio di Castro, who had just written a history of Fordlândia and Belterra. We chatted for over an hour and he showed me black and white photos of plantation workers and vintage Ford cars repurposed as work vehicles. Exhibits included latex collection tools, a zinc bucket, old telephones and computers and oil lamps.
I cited the well-tended homes and Ford’s interest in gardening as good for the morale of the workers – especially to keep them out of the fields and breweries. “Dona Clara gave prizes for the best gardens in Belterra,” Antonio said, referring to Henry Ford’s wife. Holding out a fistful of rubber seeds, he flashed me a sly smile and called him Henry Wickham. He was famous in Brazil, a British explorer who smuggled rubber seeds out of Brazil in 1876, launching the Asian rubber market – and laying waste to the Amazonian one.
On the drive back, Paulo suggested a swim in a roadside pond. As I entered, a local man pulled over and came down to the water for a drink.
“I hope there’s no caiman,” I said.
His eyebrows were wrinkled. “I don’t think so. Probably sucuri though.”
I looked at Paulo, who translated: “Anacondas”.
The end of the road
I have made Eldorado explorations in South America, looking for beauty and riches. I have had the experience of a mock conquistador, half-killing myself to reach an airtight summit or a remote glacier. The drive to Fordlândia was, as metaphors go, my Heart of darkness. I could have gone by boat but the tour operator had a six hour road trip; he hired a Fiat Mobi, which was suitable for going to the supermarket. Hardly anyone goes to Fordlândia – so it was a shot in the dark.
Paulo turned up at 8.30am and we were soon on the BR-163. One of Brazil’s mega highways, it connects the Amazon to the far south; a sign indicated that Rio de Janeiro was 4,114km away. With no holiday hard top, it was built for industry, with two lanes rammed with a few trailer trucks, sometimes in convoy. The asphalt continued to break up in later and chaotic roadworks. I saw near misses, sometimes I saw nothing at all – as we drove blindly into a cloud of red dust – and I saw two legs and a blanket: the death of a soybean truck.
Finally, we turned right for the last part – now all dirt – to Fordlândia. We checked into the Pousada Americana, where a man named Guilherme fed us fried fish, rice, beans and mangoes fresh from his trees. After a siesta I met Magno, a local history teacher who showed me around.
Above the town, the manager’s houses were just standing, with the roofs pouring, paint mottled and plaster falling off in chunks. One of them had been turned into a hotel – the Hotel Zebu – closed and mouldering, with a swimming pool cracked by invasive vegetation.
The former customs depot and warehouse was a car park on the river. One-ton blocks of rubber were once stacked here for shipment to the US. The old machine shop was still a place of work, but what was left of the original machinery was rusty and dilapidated. Equipment for volcanism was dumped in the fields.
The most American-looking building, a spindle water tower, stood high above the town, but the famous cursive lettering that told passing boats that they were near the Ford plant was long gone. The only instance of the name I could find was on the blistered cylinder head casing of an ambulance which looked quite old, but definitely ex-Fordândian.
A water pumping station in the river tilted gently, and it looked like it might go under water soon. Fire hydrants dotted around the streets were not connected to any pipelines. The old pier had lost half its length. The railway that ran deep into the rubber plantation was nowhere to be seen. A jail block was still standing though. Magno said people were not locked in as long as any misunderstandings were dispelled. Most of the golf course is taken up by the forest. Henry Ford approved of golf because his players only ever looked forward.
It was all a little dispiriting, just a little. Because I knew beforehand that Fordlândia had failed. I knew there were many reasons: their planners were more ignorant than idealistic; rubber trees that grew healthily in the wild were not liked to be planted as crops; local workers rose up against the harsh regime, terrible food, disrespect shown by foreign managers. Invented synthetic rubber. After spending the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, the site was abandoned in 1945; Henry Ford sold the land to the Brazilian government for pennies.
The locals seemed to respect their heritage. Magno said, “People get emotional when they talk about Fordlândia. Imagine a town in the Amazon in 1928 with running water, electricity, salaries for employees and houses to live in. Coming here was like winning the lottery. People were competing to get one of the five thousand jobs.” Guilherme was more measured: “Henry Ford was a visionary. But he never came here. There was a saying that anything would grow in the Amazon. But he was a fool because he never hired an agronomist who knew how to grow rubber. It might work with cars but not with plants.”
Visiting Fordlândia is more than a nostalgia trip. Fordian utopianism failed. Americans often expect others to live and work as they do. Brazilian refused. The bishops escaped in the heat and no amount of quinine could destroy snakes, jaguars and dysentery. But where rubber refused to grow, soybeans are increasing. Agro-industrialization, cattle ranching and deforestation are causing flames, death and devastation in the Lower Amazon. Fordlandia had a rainforest as a backdrop in 1928. Now charred trees lie all around like a great unknown.
How to do it
Humboldt Travel (01603 340680) has a 14-day holiday to the Amazon visiting Fordlândia and Belterra, as well as Belém, Alter do Chao and ending with a four-day cruise up the Rio Negro from Manaus. From £5,970 per person including all accommodation, transfers, guides and all flights within Brazil.
How to get there
Portugal tap a direct flight to Belém from Lisbon from £795 return; several airlines operate between UK airports and Lisbon, Latam flies to Santarém and Belém via São Paulo.
