City in the Forest: Belterra, a syringa plantation experience in brazilian Amazon, by Henry Ford (1934-1945)

Abstract

This article examines how the American capital was attracted to the Brazilian Amazon by granting one million hectares on the right bank of the Tapajós River in Pará state and the tax exemption for a period of 50 years to Henry Ford’s company. These Procedures adopted by the Pará government in accordance with requests by the federal government created a favorable environment for the installation of the company town by Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil (CFIB) and following (re) socialization of a large contingent of Brazilian migrants and foreigners in the city of Fordlandia, and later in Belterra. Its discipline, control, training and organization on a salary-compensation basis was based on the Fordist system of production. We introduce in this work the capitalist civilizational project and the structuring aspects of its rationality, through the “speech on development” that produces sense when founded on the inferiority of the “other” and the demographic void to justify the project of capitalist modernization underway in the country and forwarded beyond that period.