All Things Considered (National Public Radio)
June 6, 2009
Henry Ford didn't just want to be a maker of cars — he wanted to be a maker of men. He thought he could perfect society by building model factories and pristine villages to go with them. And he was pretty successful at it in Michigan. But in the jungles of Brazil, he would ultimately be defeated.
It was 1927. Ford wanted his own supply of rubber — and he decided to get it by carving a plantation and a miniature Midwest factory town out of the Amazon jungle. It was called "Fordlandia."
Leonor Weeks DeCeco was 8 years old when she joined her father in Henry Ford's jungle utopia. "We had everything that we really wanted. We had a swimming pool, tennis court, golf course, and I had my animals — my Chico, which was a rare monkey."
"My dad was a construction engineer, and he was in charge of everything, and I enjoyed being down there with him," she says.
But for pretty much everyone else, it was a green hell of riot and blight. Author Greg Grandin tells the story in his new book, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City...
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