I enjoy seeing foreigners/Americans reactions to this. Fordlandia looks like a playground to them, generally. Even a bit like fiction. They don't understand that it was real, with real people. Slavery isn't even mentioned once. Just "anti-semitism", to make what really happened just blur in the background of this story.
It's all fun and games, if your family wasn't part of this abuse.
Basically they mention "Amazon" as if it was a country on its own, it is actually in Brazil. It as if I had trillions and the US would let me explore their population and relax their own laws in order for me to invest on it. I bet Americans would feel mad about it. This happens frequently in Brazil, with big US(and also other companies) which can get away owing billions in unpaid taxes etc.
The US constantly throughout history has intervened in Brazil, let it be by politics or markets, thinking that they know better, lobbying corrupt politicians, or helping on a coup. It is kind of sad.
In the end the author mentions about in the end of WW2, they filling the city with military personnel. It is a very soulless article.
This was actually one of the more benign operations of rubber extraction. The previous efforts (not by Ford) in the Congo and in Peru were absolutely atrocious. The book The Dream of the Celt by Vargas Llosa does a good job of describing the horrors that went on in those countries.
As for US companies, they really have a long history of misdeeds in Central and South America. Guatemala had to endure 40 years of dictatorship because of bananas. That's just absurd.
It's all fun and games, if your family wasn't part of this abuse.
Basically they mention "Amazon" as if it was a country on its own, it is actually in Brazil. It as if I had trillions and the US would let me explore their population and relax their own laws in order for me to invest on it. I bet Americans would feel mad about it. This happens frequently in Brazil, with big US(and also other companies) which can get away owing billions in unpaid taxes etc.
The US constantly throughout history has intervened in Brazil, let it be by politics or markets, thinking that they know better, lobbying corrupt politicians, or helping on a coup. It is kind of sad.
In the end the author mentions about in the end of WW2, they filling the city with military personnel. It is a very soulless article.
All that for pure entertainment of some.