Somewhere in my travel research, Fordlândia, Henry Ford’s namesake town, appeared on my radar. Ford built “…a prefabricated industrial town intended to be inhabited by 10,000 people to secure a source of cultivated rubber…” He failed, big time.  An enormous number of mistakes were made in planning and running the town. The land was wrong, rubber trees were planted too closely together, and most of all the US managers tried to tell the Brazilian workers how to live and work. Even the food the company provided was wrong.

The debacle of Fordlândia could be a study case of cross-cultural insensitivity. Eventually, the Brazilian laborers rioted against the company rules and refused to work. The army arrived to restore order, and concessions were made to appease the workers, but the concept and operations of the site remained deeply flawed. Add yellow fever and malaria to the mix and it’s easy to see the project didn’t go well. After spending 8 years building the town and suffering a mired of problems, Ford relocated the facility downriver. It is said, "Not one drop of latex from Fordlândia ever made it into a Ford car.” Eleven years later the advent of synthetic rubber changed the market and Henry Ford II sold the towns back to the Brazilian government, losing millions. 

Some of the structures Ford built remain. Housing that was abandoned years ago has been reoccupied. The hospital building collapsed. The famously imported water tower still stands alongside the three-floor machine shop. The municipal maintenance facility now occupies the area nearby.

Getting to Fordlândia means riding 220 km south of Santarém, turning left and heading west on the Trans-Amazonian Highway for 70 km, then turning left again, heading north 45 km on the dirt road that is BR 163. All in, travel to Fordlândia took 6-7 hours. The other way to get from Santarém to Fordlândia is by boat on the Rio Tapajós, but I just got off two days on a ferry from Manaus, so no. I arrived in the late afternoon and immediately took a few photos of the machine shop and iconic water tower through a high chainlink fence. I have to do better. Finding the front gate, I asked the site manager if I could visit the property in the morning. Yes!

The next day as workers were assembling on the office porch. They seemed slightly amused or perhaps confused that a tourist was visiting a backwater town. For certain, I wasn't the first outsider to visit, so it might be amusement. My goal was clear, check in with the manager and see what happens next. Of course, I didn't complicate my visit with questions of where I could and couldn’t go on the property. Being restricted from entering the decaying buildings was my biggest fear. There are times when not speaking Portuguese helps limit too much conversation. A simple "good morning" to the boss then I casually drifted away from the office and around the buildings. The site appeared to be the Fordlândia municipal depot. Dying school buses, the back half of a dump truck, and road-grading tractors populated the equipment cemetery. 

On the backside of the largest building, I found an open doorway and stepped inside. A rouge’s gallery of decades-old industry machinery and a weird collection of storage greeted me. Rusting pick-up trucks, piles of forgotten wood, tables, enormous lathes, pipe fitting machines, fuel tanks, and what looked like a giant generator had gathered a thick layer of dust and were slowly rusting in the tropical humidity. I gingerly climbed the stairs, with each stair riser carefully testing the integrity of the wood treads. On the upper level, I didn’t venture onto the wooden floor. Any plank of the floor had the potential of collapsing underneath me. I found odd plumbing parts and fittings scattered on the floor. Further back, large piles of tropical seeds lay drying, forgotten. 

Why had I come to Fordlândia? The closest description I can muster, commercial disaster tourism and absorbing a study in cross-cultural hubris. Mission complete. Time to head towards my next destination, a friend’s place in Bahia, several days to the east.