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Brazilian government officials celebrated a court decision ordering the preservation of Fordlandia, a 1928 city built by US industrialist Henry Ford in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
The court decision was the result of years of lobbying, during which historians, activists and residents pushed for the site’s preservation.
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Some hope that the site can be restored and used to promote tourism in Brazil’s Para region.
In a words On Friday, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office called the court a “significant” decision that will end the disparity in social security services in Brazil.
The office wrote: “The building has been neglected for years.
“This ruling acknowledges the arguments made by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in the case, and highlights what the federal authorities have not done in history.”
The decision requires the federal government, the state of Para, the state of Aveiro and the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) to work together to protect the site.
“They all have to do something to save the property, which has been badly damaged,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Since the 1990s, the management system has been in the process of improving the quality of the system.
But prosecutors – both public and private – said the government’s “inertia” in looking at the site had “put its preservation at risk”.
In a statement on Friday, the federal office said the importance of Fordlandia’s history is clear.
“Fordlandia is a very important part of the history of Brazil and the international industry,” it wrote. “This project represented an American effort to break the British monopoly on rubber, bringing advanced infrastructure – such as a hospital, running water, electricity and television – to the heart of the Amazon in the 1920s.”
The construction of Fordlandia began in 1928, when Ford tried to market the rubber industry.
The founder of the Ford Motor Company, Ford was one of the richest men of his time, and he invested about $20m in clearing the Amazon region and building the city of his dreams, where he could prove his vision of healthy living and good work.
The Fordlandia experiment ultimately failed. Workers rioted because of strict rules governing their practices, including a diet based on foods such as oatmeal and canned peaches. Alcohol and tobacco were banned.
Ford, too, suffered, losing control over his company as competition in the automotive industry began to dominate the US market.
But one big problem was the rubber itself. Ford’s plans to have large plantations to supply tire rubber to his company failed, as the crops were infected with fungi and insects. By 1945, Fordlandia was sold to the Brazilian government for $244,200.
However, in the decades since, thousands of people have remained in Fordlandia. However, without maintenance, the infrastructure has begun to decay, and the water supply is unreliable.
Speaking to Al Jazeera in 2024people remember how the city’s hospital was burned down in 2012, and looters ransacked the city.
“There was good health care. We could go to the hospital, and we were given medicine,” resident Raimunda Maria Silva Santos told reporter Eleonore Hughes.
Santos added that he had been without water for 30 days. “That golden age is behind us.”
Poverty is still high in the Brazilian Amazon. In the forest of Para, for example, there was poverty 39.3 percent in 2023.
In a statement on Friday, prosecutors confirmed that, according to the court’s decision, local people have the right to see Fordlandia restored.
“This region is still an important memory of the Brazilian people, which now has the legal right to be restored and preserved for future generations,” he said.
