Fordlandia - the lost city of the Amazon

“So, where do you want to go?” the best guide in Santarem inquired with a yawn.

Gil’s phone rang constantly. He arranged tour schedules on his coaster. He wanted to refer me to colleagues, but they were busy.

“You interested in cars?” His remark threw me. I said my cousin Paul built a Model T from an abandoned chassis in his Padstow backyard. But what had that to do with the jungle?

“Great!” His eyes lit up as though hitting the jackpot. “Pack your stuff. You’re heading to Fordlandia.”

So now I was going to a place deemed “a tropical ghost town”. When Seringue bought my ticket, a local asked why in the world I wanted to visit such a forlorn place as Fordlandia?

“All they do is fish, drink and live on government handouts!” he snorted. I had no idea, but the irony appealed to me. You could only get to Fordlandia by boat.

A 300km journey southwest of Santarem would take approximately 12 hours.

“Slightly longer” Gil shouted portside, “if it sinks.” He drove away towards wealthy tourists disgorging from a cruise ship that had docked overnight.

On the boat I meet Bruno, a research student at an Amazonian Institute on his way to Itaituba to research the impact of mining. When I mentioned Fordlandia, Bruno didn’t find the notion of a car production plant in the middle of the jungle surreal. “Volkswagon and Xerox have done the same. They’ve bought huge tracts of land. I mean huge!”

I quickly learnt that international investors were lured into the Amazon, aided by subsidised loans, tax credits and writeoffs.

“But they’re unlikely to turn a profit. It’s the Brazilian way,” he said with a wink.

Profit may not be the Brazilian way, but it is the American way. Henry Ford put into reality what Theodore Roosevelt had only dreamt of in 1911. The former president had visions of a jungle criss-crossed with railroad tracks which would service the settlers in towns who communicated by telegraph. To bulldoze an idea into being was a singular American passion. When Confederates fled the United States in 1867, they moved to Santarem believing the Amazon could be transformed into “a second Mississippi” - one they could harness for their material benefit. Pretty soon, these exiles were defeated by heat, humidity and jaguars prowling the streets at night.