the lost rubber cities uxeta labrit
At the beginning of the last century, the riches offered by the jungles on the banks of the River Amazon were the object of plunder by the great world economic powers of the time. Aided by swift progress in technology, these countries viewed nature as an overflowing source of wealth and riches. Nature, however, has always shown a special and frightening ability to defend itself. As the Xingu tribe from the Amazon put it: "The jungle was here before mankind, and it will still be here long after mankind has disappeared". Well, anyway, we’d better leave the green spiritual philosophical stuff to Sting. What we are interested in is nature’s power of revenge. In particular, we shall look at the cases of Fordlandia and Belterra, where different camera shots taken over time will speed us quickly through nature’s years of revenge.
Not wishing to beat a veggie-eating-cross on your heads, we shall, however, recall what we said in the first paragraph: the birth of the previous century also signalled the start of the race to strip the Amazon of its immense store of natural riches. This created wealth and the vanity that inevitably accompanies. Manaus, a village in the middle of the jungle, became the new Athens. The biggest opera stars of the period all performed at the Opera House built there. They say that the heat and humidity of the jungle along with its malaria and chronic fever makes gods of men. The unstable relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski superbly showcases this sentiment in the films "Agirre and The Wrath of God" (1973) and "Fitzcarraldo" (1992) To be watched as homework, please.
Following in the footsteps of Manaus, the plunderers started to build towns and cities where originally there was nothing but jungle. Wealthy American entrepreneur Henry Ford built Fordlandia and Belterra at the start of the 1930s. He wanted to break the stranglehold monopoly on the rubber trade enjoyed by the British and the Dutch. Ford negotiated with the Brazilian and American governments and spent $20,000,000 dollars of the time on 10,000 square kilometres of land along the banks of the River Tapajós. He then set up huge hebea brasiliensis– the rubber tree – plantations.
Fordlandia and Belterra were built according to standard city layouts in the USA. Golf courses, wooden houses, pine groves, the church, the hospital that would perform the first plastic surgery in Brazil, the "Hase" Dance Club, shops, hamburger joints, etc... There was distinct social separation in Fordlandia and Belterra. The white gringos lived in Villa Americana, on Mensalitas Street. The Brazilian upper classes and their servants. The native workers lived on Workers Street, on the outskirts.
But Ford, who never set foot in the Amazon jungle, made one stupid mistake after another. Workdays were from 9 to 15 hours long in the humid, close and stuffy jungle clime; the natives were forced to wear shoes; in the houses that were exact copies of houses in the USA, glass windows that multiplied the heat were installed; and worst of all, the puritan Ford banned alcohol. That was the last straw for the workers, who revolted. When the Brazilian Army put down the revolt, many of the workers escaped to the bar and brothel-ridden Isle of Inocencia. In addition to all of that, Ford’s botanist didn’t know or understand the tropics. They planted the rubber trees too close to one another and they soon became the target of different plagues. Fordlandia never witnessed a single harvest of latex. Belterra managed its first harvest in 1942, all 750 tonnes of it. Previsions were for a harvest of 38,000 tonnes. The extremely low-yield harvests coupled with the invention of synthetic rubber were the last nail in the coffin of the Fordlandia and Belterra dream. The gringos fled from the Amazon Jungle at the outbreak of WWII (and they took all the machinery with them.)
Today, a few families inhabit Belterra and Fordlandia is abandoned… Just another example of what Joseph Conrad describes in the “Journey into The Heart of Darkness”.
Not wishing to beat a veggie-eating-cross on your heads, we shall, however, recall what we said in the first paragraph: the birth of the previous century also signalled the start of the race to strip the Amazon of its immense store of natural riches. This created wealth and the vanity that inevitably accompanies. Manaus, a village in the middle of the jungle, became the new Athens. The biggest opera stars of the period all performed at the Opera House built there. They say that the heat and humidity of the jungle along with its malaria and chronic fever makes gods of men. The unstable relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski superbly showcases this sentiment in the films "Agirre and The Wrath of God" (1973) and "Fitzcarraldo" (1992) To be watched as homework, please.
Following in the footsteps of Manaus, the plunderers started to build towns and cities where originally there was nothing but jungle. Wealthy American entrepreneur Henry Ford built Fordlandia and Belterra at the start of the 1930s. He wanted to break the stranglehold monopoly on the rubber trade enjoyed by the British and the Dutch. Ford negotiated with the Brazilian and American governments and spent $20,000,000 dollars of the time on 10,000 square kilometres of land along the banks of the River Tapajós. He then set up huge hebea brasiliensis– the rubber tree – plantations.
Fordlandia and Belterra were built according to standard city layouts in the USA. Golf courses, wooden houses, pine groves, the church, the hospital that would perform the first plastic surgery in Brazil, the "Hase" Dance Club, shops, hamburger joints, etc... There was distinct social separation in Fordlandia and Belterra. The white gringos lived in Villa Americana, on Mensalitas Street. The Brazilian upper classes and their servants. The native workers lived on Workers Street, on the outskirts.
But Ford, who never set foot in the Amazon jungle, made one stupid mistake after another. Workdays were from 9 to 15 hours long in the humid, close and stuffy jungle clime; the natives were forced to wear shoes; in the houses that were exact copies of houses in the USA, glass windows that multiplied the heat were installed; and worst of all, the puritan Ford banned alcohol. That was the last straw for the workers, who revolted. When the Brazilian Army put down the revolt, many of the workers escaped to the bar and brothel-ridden Isle of Inocencia. In addition to all of that, Ford’s botanist didn’t know or understand the tropics. They planted the rubber trees too close to one another and they soon became the target of different plagues. Fordlandia never witnessed a single harvest of latex. Belterra managed its first harvest in 1942, all 750 tonnes of it. Previsions were for a harvest of 38,000 tonnes. The extremely low-yield harvests coupled with the invention of synthetic rubber were the last nail in the coffin of the Fordlandia and Belterra dream. The gringos fled from the Amazon Jungle at the outbreak of WWII (and they took all the machinery with them.)
Today, a few families inhabit Belterra and Fordlandia is abandoned… Just another example of what Joseph Conrad describes in the “Journey into The Heart of Darkness”.
