U9D1-12 & S1 - What issues of culture and power can be related to members of non-dominant or diverse populations? See Details Below.

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

REVIEWS

Henry Ford's Tropical Folly By Marcelo Ballvé

fORDLANDIA m mfmm sf Km mBs msonm jumi cut

FORDLANDtA: THE RISE AND FALL OF HENRY FORDS FORGOnEN JUNGLE CITY by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books, 2009), 432 pp., $27.50 paperback

[N THE LATt 1 9 2 0 s AND 1 9 3 0 5 , A PIECE

of small-town America took shape on the banks of a great jungle river in Brazil. Streets with names like Hillside and Riverside traversed a ptot of land overlooking the muddy Rio Tapajós. There was a Main Street, a school- house, a hospital, a "nature park" (cre- ated from a leftover scrap of jungle), two swimming pools, and a nine-hole golf course.

The settlement, deep in the Brazil- ian rainforest, was called Fordlandia, after the visionary U.S. industrialist who directed its creation: Henry Ford. He was a man known among his con- temporaries not only for his genius and market dominance but for his wide- ranging eccentricities. But Ford's at- tempt to re-create a midwestem town in Amazonia might rank as his odd- est and most improbable quest. The 50

story of Ford's tropical folly is told in brisk prose and often fascinating detail by Greg Grandin, a professor of Latin American history at New York Umver- sity and a member of NACL% editorial committee.

Ford's pretext for establishing Ford- landia was rubber, needed not only for car tires, but also for countless car pans and industrial tools. At the time, Dutch and English colonies in Asia domi- nated world rubber production. Ford and other industrialists of the time, like Harvey Firestone, decided to break the European monopoly Firestone cre- ated a rubber plantation in Liberia, while Ford chose Brazil, a characteristi- cally arrogant and impractical choice. Growing rubber on a large scale in Brazil would entail, essentially, turning back the clock. Rubber production had shifted to Asia, and to some extent Af- rica, because the tree didn't suffer from diseases and pests on those continents. In South America, native pests like leaf blight, the lace bug, and sphinx cat- erpillars had evolved alongside wild rubber trees, making plantation-style cultivation nearly impossible. That's why Brazil had swung from a late- 19th-century rubber boom to lowly status as a has-been latex power in the course of only a few years.

Ford was sure he could bring the rubber boom times back, ln the com- pany's heyday Ford men were known for their can-do arrogance. They be- lieved the company capable of any- thing and applied their assembly-line methods to a variety of endeavors. They built airplanes, tractors, cars; they milled wood, built power stations, op- erated cargo ships, founded towns, and mined coal; they damned rivers, laid railroad ties, and shilled their model-Ts and model-As all over the world.

The Ford name was already well- entrenched in South America by the late 1920s. The company had begun producing cars m Buenos Aires in 1917 and Sao Paulo in 1920. In the grand Ford Motor Company order of things, a single rubber plantation in Brazil didn't seem an outsize goal, even if the allot- ment for Fordlandia was nearly the size of Connecticut. Amazonia's reputation for impenetrability didn't intimidate them either. Instead, it fired Ford men's imaginations. "Generations of little men have nibbled, like mice, at the edges of the Amazonia," wrote William Schurz, Washington's commercial attaché in Rio, as he lobbied Ford to commit to the Brazilian adventure. Ford, Schurz urged, could be a trailblazer, bringing modernity to the whole jungle.

Utopian ideas quickly came to dom- inate plans for Fordlandia. Ford would deliver what Brazils rainforest had never seen: real civilization. Not the boom-and-bust, oligarchy-controlled veneer of the traditional wild rub- ber economy. Rather, Ford would re- make the jungle, rescuing the region's mixed-race rubber-tapping caboclos from bondage to local big-men. His enterprise would transform them into healthy prosperous, educated wage earners who on weekends would at- tend booze-free square dances. Ford had attempted similar social experi- ments in Iron Mountain and Pequam- ing, logging towns he founded or pur- chased in Michigan's water-bounded Upper Peninsula. Ford doted on these towns, as he would from a distance on Fordlandia, viewing each as a test tube for his idea that semi-bucolic agro- industrial towns could counterbalance the excesses of urban capitalism. Even as Ford enforced ruthless speedups and unleashed a kind of internal secret

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

REVIEWS

police on his Michigan factory work- ers, he poured millions of dollars into the model towns.

As the U.S. consul in Belém, a city ai the mouth of the Amazon River, says in the book. Ford's utopianism was "the only theory" that could ex- plain his loyalty to the expensive, un- profitable rubber plantation alongside the Tapajós River And to a surprising extent. Ford's dreams for his Brazil- ian outpost did materialize. Part of the charm of Grandins book is that he puts as much gusto into describing Fordlandia's concrete achievements as he does its many farcical failures. Not one, but two U.S.-style towns, Ford- landia and Beltena, were eventually built on the Tapajós, complete viith Swiss- and Cape Cod-style cottages. The rubber trees remained stubborn and never produced as much as the company hoped. But a web of modem infrastructure—sewage plants, plumb- ing, hospitals, and schools—delivered services to formerly destitute laborers.

Eventually, Eords Amazonian ven- ture faded. The company dispensed with Fordlandia afier World War II, as the once sprawling company re- organized into a leaner enterprise. Ford's jungle outposts became wards of the Brazilian government, and were adopted and quickly orphaned by a string of federal agencies.

Grandin made two visits to Ford's adades fantasmas, or ghost towns, tn the course of researching his book. In one passage Grandin describes the ruins of the once immaculate Fordian- dia hospital designed by Albert Kahn, the industrial architect responsible for Henr)' Ford's two monumental Michi- gan factories. Highland Park and River Rouge. The passage reads as if the hospital froze in time as soon as the last Eord employee left in the 1940s:

Most oJ the beds are gone, but some equipment, made of metal and glass that today looks menacing hut in the 1930s

was state ofûie art, remains. In the stenl- izaäon room there's a large apparatus that suggest a front-loaded washing machine, and the gynecology room still has its ex- aminaäon table. The surgery and X-ray rooms are bare, but the laboratoiy has some bottles and test-tubes lying around and the records of the hospital's last state- ments strewn on theßoor.

it's an unforgettable image: the de- bris of early U.S. industrial optimism, wilting in a faraway jungle some seven decades later.

If Grandin's hook has any weakness, it is organization. Grandin uses a loose thematic approach to his chapters, instead of arranging them chronologi- cally He is often forced to double back on himself, leading to repetitions and a confused timeline. For example, Gran- din arrives at the imponant topic of the Great Depression and its impact on Eordlandia more than halfway through the book. But he has already jumped ahead in previous chapters, descnbing the evolution of Fordlandia through the end of 1929 and a workers' riot that nearly destroyed Eordlandia in late 1930. Grandin tells us the Great Depression was late to arrive in north- em Brazil, but it's confusing to leam of its dramatic effects on the Ford Motor Company at this point, when so much territory has already been covered. Then, in later chapters, we leam details about rubber cultivation and company history that pre-date the Depression, as well as the Fordlandia workers' riot, which may have been more useful earlier.

There's no doubt the real tuming point for Fordlandia was not the Great Depression, but the 1930 riot. Gran- din, here as elsewhere, marshals his historical research expertly to construct a terrific story The riot began when Ford managers tried to institute a new cafeteria-style serving regimen at the dining hall, to replace the usual sys- tem in which a leam of waiters served

Progressive Spanish Immersion School

Mor« tfwn a Languag« School, a Whole Experience

20+ Years Teaching and Learning

Learn or improve your Spanish with us Experience Mexican Cuiture first-hand Explore current and historical issues

Mexican homestays and LGBT friendly

2010 Social Justice Programs

' Women and Social Change In Mexico January 9 - 22, 2010

' Winter LGBT in Mexico January 9 - 22, 2010

Language and Culture for Educators June 1 2 - J u l y 2, 2010

Summer LGBT Program June 19-Juty9, 2010

Medicine in Mexico July 17 -Augiisi 6, 2010

• ••- •,!• iLALIC PO Bo« 1-201.62000

Cuernavaca. Morekis. MEXICOJ [email protected]

htlpV/www.cellalic.org.mxl TEL(53-777) 313-5450

the dishes. The line backed up, and in the heat, the workers grew angry. One of the workers, 35-year-old Manuel Caetano de Jesus, confronted the Ford man, Kaj Ostenfeld, charged with im- plementing the cafeteria plan. Their heated exchange, during which de Jesus took off his identification badge and handed it to Ostenfeid, drew a crowd. Ostenfeld laughed, and his dismissive attitude infuriated the on- lookers. Later, Ostenfeld would testify that at this point de Jesus tumed to his fellow workers and said, "I have done everything for you. Now you can do the rest." It was as if someone had put a "match to gasoline," Ostenfeld said. Workers began breaking plates, glasses and cafeteria chairs to bits.

The real reason for the disturbance was the workers" frustration with the company's regimented culture. Ford- landia's management had intermit- tently clamped down on prostitution

51

REVIEWS

NACLA REPORT ON THÉ AMERICAS

and alcohol, and it required unmarried men to dine in a common mess hail, li had also waged intrusive sanitation campaigns and health checks. As one worker complained, "The Americans suppose we are all full of worms," The workers were forced to use ID badges and driven hard by monolingual U.S, foremen. Eventually, their collective reservoir of frustration spills over.

Once the riot got going, the U.S, staff fled, first to their exclusive com- pound and then to river craft set aside for such an emergency Unleashed, the workers torched and smashed ev- erything they could: the dining hall, residences, cars, tractors, the machine shop, and company records. Special targets of their wrath were the com- pany time clocks. Workers had previ- ously been accustomed to sitting out the hottest part of the day, or down- pours, and calibrating work according to the wet and dry seasons. In Ford- landia, they were required to stay on the clock, no matter what.

The workers ultimately failed to gain any concessions from the noto- riously anti-labor company. Their riot was defused with the help of Juan Trippe, the powerful CEO of Pan Am, who loaned Eordlandia execs a few airplanes to fly a detachment of Bra- zilian soldiers to Lhe worker-occupied plantation on Chnstmas Eve, The workers were persuaded to give up their weapons and eventually received paychecks through December 22, the day of the riot. Then they were fired.

Thus began the second phase of Fordlandia, in which the company would correct some of the mistakes it had made in the past. Plantation man- agement under Archibald Johnston—a Scotsman nicknamed the "White Ti- ger" by Brazilians impressed by his jun- gle-readiness—made more oían eiïort to adapt to local conditions, with one fundamental exception. James Weir, an expert plant pathologist hired to make rubber thrive at Fordlandia, rec- 52

ommended techniques transplanted unchanged from virtually pest-free Sumatra. The pathologist's advice was followed closely by Ford headquarters, over Johnstons frequent objections that Weirfe strategy made no sense in Brazil, "One does not have to be an ex- pert," Johnston wisely remarked at one point, "to know that a standard prac- tice in one country can be detrimental to good practice in another."

The results of the Asia-influenced approach were predictable: failure after failure. An expensive and time- consuming transfer of rubber cultiva- tion away from Fordlandia and to a new down-river plantation, Belterra, didn't help much. Even armies of workers laboriously handpicking caterpillars off trees didn't succeed in coaxing the rubber to flow

In the late 1930s, once Weir quit, a Fordlandia-developed technique called top grafting managed to yield some significant results, but never enough to make the venture worthwhile. Any- way, by then it was almost beside the point. Ford was retreating into his late-life obsession with artifacts of the p re-industrial United States (toys, fur- niture, even whole historical buildings, like the home of Walt Whitman, taken apart and shipped to Michigan for re- assembly). Ford brought these artifacts together at a massive open-air museum called Greenfield Village, and gradu- ally distanced himself from day-to-day management of Ford business.

Meanwhile, Ford's company was beset by labor unrest, violently re- pressed by the thuggish mafia-linked enforcer Harry Bennett- Nudged by his wife and son. Ford eventually gave in and signed a union contract. Later. Ford Motor became a virtual exten- sion of the U.S. military, devoted to manufacturing for the 1940s war ef- fort. The company's postwar reorga- nization ended its "classic" era as a multi-product industrial behemoth. Fixers brought in to streamline the

company cut Fordlandia from the budget, and it was handed over to the Brazilian government.

Grandin does an expert job of ty- ing Fordlandia's legacy to the Ama- zon Basin's current woes. Like Fords misbegotten expenment, the Brazilian government's half-baked industrializa- tion {centered on a maquiladora-style factories), urbanization, and road- building schemes obliterate the fragile rainforest without laying the ground- work for long-term economic success. Today, on the southern fringes of Am- azonia, the agribusiness soybean fron- tier is gobbling up ever larger chunks of jungle, including swaths of what was once Fordlandia.

The book's final judgment on Fordlandia might apply to all the shortsighted market approaches to Amazonian development that suc- ceeded it. "Fordlandia is indeed a parable of arrogance," Grandin writes. "The arrogance, though, is not that Henry Ford thought that he could tame the Amazon but that he believed the forces of capitalism, once released, could still be contained."

For generations. South American governments, international lenders, major corporations, and international nongovernmental organizations have naively believed massive development works motivated by for-expori inter- ests will somehow lead to a healthy rainforest and prosperity for its inhab- itants. It already seems clear that this model has failed. The rainforest con- tinues to shrink, the region's residents don't get any richer, and jungle cities like Manaus spread in an inkblot pat- tern of slums.

Who will put the genie back in the bottle for Amazonia?

Marcelo Ballvé is a contributing editor [or New America Media, where he covers immigration and Latin America. He is a 2009 fellow al the Writers' Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.