Wednesday, August 21, 2013

I didn't shoot this...

I have always been fascinated by the story of Fordlandia, a folly perpetrated 
by Henry Ford in the Amazon rainforest in 1928.
It was supposed to supply a never-ending source of rubber 
for his factories, but it was a dismal failure.

The Wikipedia entry gives a background to the venture, and 
outlines why it failed. It also has this beautiful, haunting photograph, 
taken about 2005 (author: Meduse). 
Please enlarge it so that you can see the dog...


 If you are interested in seeing more photos of Fordlandia, see some by Dan Dubowitz here.



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6 comments:

  1. Elephant's ChildAugust 21, 2013 at 11:46 PM

    That is a very, very thin dog. Urk.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MastHolidayAugust 22, 2013 at 5:55 AM

    `Interesting! "Dog" on the road.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©August 22, 2013 at 6:02 AM

    Wow. That wikipedia entry is amazing.

    =>Ford intended to use Fordlândia to provide his company with a source of rubber for the tires on Ford cars, avoiding the dependence on British (Malayan) rubber. The land was hilly, rocky and infertile. None of Ford's managers had the requisite knowledge of tropical agriculture. The rubber trees, packed closely together in plantations, as opposed to being widely spaced in the jungle, were easy prey for tree blight, sauva ants, lace bugs, red spiders, and leaf caterpillars, a problem absent from the Asian rubber plantations, where transplanted Amazonian rubber trees faced no natural predators.

    The mostly indigenous workers on the plantations, given unfamiliar food such as hamburgers and forced to live in American-style housing, disliked the way they were treated—they had to wear ID badges, and work through the middle of the day under the tropical sun—and would often refuse to work. In 1930 the native workers revolted against the managers, many of whom fled into the jungle for a few days until the Brazilian Army arrived and the revolt ended.<=

    Such an imperialist attitude.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  4. GillyAugust 23, 2013 at 6:04 AM

    That picture has a spooky sort of air! And are you sure that is a dog? Looks like some sort of small deer to me, though I'm not sure if they have those in the Amazon rain forest!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Bob ScotneyAugust 23, 2013 at 6:19 AM

    Liked the picture but had not heard of the Fordlandia venture before - a 'production line' that didn't work.

    ReplyDelete

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