“We will get our men in Brazil. We are not going to South America to make money but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land…We’ll train the Brazilians and they’ll work as well as any others.”

--Henry Ford

 

Humans and nature are imperfect. Wild, mortal and unpredictable. Visionaries of every era conceive of ideal societies; communities of utter harmony and systemization where all will be forever well in the world. One such naive dreamer was Henry Ford.  As so often happens, his close-minded fantasy of Fordlandia developed quickly into a dysfunctional dystopia for those living in it. His ill-fated attempt to force the Brazilian nature and people to conform to his American ideas ended in 1944. 

Years later this town of abandoned industrial splendor has lain dormant. Invaded by the wild Brazilian nature it was meant to tame, the remains are filled with memories of a different era. It is a monument to the abandoned utopia of one man and dystopia of many more