Fordlandia, anyone?

Wow. Thanks for the link. I never heard of that story. 20 Million back then must be like a billion now. Wow.

OH MY GOSH-- I've been there!!! Actually, I was in its successor, Belterra. I was in Santarem, Brazil for three weeks in college, and Belterra is nearby. It was incredibly creepy-- this little American-like ghost town. I just hunted up a journal entry I wrote about the experience:

Many pounds bloated, we drove on. For a while, we drove past thatched houses—some children stoning an iguana, people sitting outside and staring at our van as it passed. I don’t think we passed any other vehicles on our way. Then, suddenly, the houses switched from mud and thatch to wooden houses, painted white with green trim. This was Belterra.
Belterra was the successor to Fordlandia, which ludicrous as the name is, was indeed founded by the Ford Motor Company, to supply rubber for tires. It is a hybrid town—American reality transported to a few thousand acres in the middle of the jungle. Ford left Brazil in 1946, to buy cheaper Asian latex, but straight rows of rubber trees still bear diagonal scars. Most of original houses are still inhabited, and still white and green. I went into one that was abandoned. Dust carpeted a counter, quilting the jars and glass that sat on top. A newspaper stuck out of a drawer, yellow. I tore off a piece. On it was a picture of a bearded, bundled Santa Clause holding a little brown child who wore only a diaper. And words: o ano de 1963…
Beside the abandoned house was a large, abandoned hospital. Through a window, we could see rows upon rows of dusty beds. Beds, in a place where most people sleep in hammocks. All of the doors of the hospital were closed and boarded, and despite our best efforts to pry our way in, the hospital remained closed to us. Just outside the hospital was a red fire hydrant, with the word “Minnesota” written around its top. The street was called “Vila Americana.”

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Small world!