ALTER DO CHAO, BRAZIL

Continuing down the Amazon River, we next stopped at the little resort town of Alter do Chao (Earth’s Altar) up the Tapajos River just before it meets the muddy Amazon. Named for its flat, altar-like hill, it looks like a Mediterranean tropical paradise, with palm trees, white sand and clear blue water.

It was in this area that Henry Ford tried to start two rubber plantations, and he planted over 3 million rubber trees! The first attempt was in the 1920s in Fordlandia approximately 80 miles to the south of Santarem near Alter do Chao, and later in Belterra about 12 miles south of here, in the 1930s. Ford’s idea was to produce rubber for his automobile factory, and built roads (just unpaved dirt tracks!) and an American-style town for the workers. Unfortunately both ventures failed and at the end of WWII Ford sold his interest and the Brazilian government now operates it. People still live in Belterra, and many of the homes and services Ford built are still in operation. His fully equipped machine shop is used for furniture manufacturing today.

Rubber trees originally grew only in the Amazon jungle, giving the province of Amazonia a firm monopoly on latex collection and rubber production. Fortunes were made by the “rubber barons,“ jobs were created and cities flourished. One of the main reasons for the demise of the natural rubber industry was the theft of 70,000 rubber tree seeds by Henry Wickham. In 1876 he smuggled them into England where they were sprouted under supervision, and a few decades later the seedlings were sent to the British Asian colonies. Brazilians called him the “Executioner of Amazonas” but the British knighted him! The final nail in the natural rubber coffin was the development of synthetics in the 1920s.