[deleted]
Fordlandia – The failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
11–14 of 14 posts
Re: Fordlandia – The failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
#12The article really softpedals the whole "civilize the heathen savages" angle. When Ford said he wanted to "develop" South America, what he meant was that he wanted to teach the locals how to behave like his idea of proper white folks. Racial segregation was built-in. Not just alcohol but tobacco, women, and--for some reason--football were forbidden in Fordlandia, and inspectors could demand entry at any time to make sure you were following the rules. Workers were required to work through the traditional (and very sensible, in that climate) midday siesta. Ford was even determined to make them eat like American whites--they were given only American food to eat, nothing local. The riots the article blames on a bricklayer's dispute with a supervisor were, according to Wikipedia, a revolt against the food--menu concessions were only made after the riots.
Re: Fordlandia – The failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
#13The article really softpedals the whole "civilize the heathen savages" angle. When Ford said he wanted to "develop" South America, what he meant was that he wanted to teach the locals how to behave like his idea of proper white folks. Racial segregation was built-in. Not just alcohol but tobacco, women, and--for some reason--football were forbidden in Fordlandia, and inspectors could demand entry at any time to make…
Very interesting!
Re: Fordlandia – The failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
#14I recently read Grandin's book after learning about this from a Priceonomics article. It's fascinating not just for the way that it ultimately failed, but also the level of power and influence that Henry Ford had at the time to be able to do it at all... The Ford Company was privately held, and what Henry Ford said, went. Enormous amounts of time, money, and manpower went into developing this colony, on the back of i…
I have heard that pre-WW1, pre-WW2, and pre-atom bomb, there was a culture of hopefulness and idealism that we could soon cure all humanity's ills with technology and progress. Unfortunately, those events served to at least partially extinguish that dream.
It's definitely coming back, that hopefulness.