Lost city of the Amazon - Page 5

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Jorge Sotirios

TO AVOID THE MIDDAY humidity, I take refuge in a small bar run by sixteen-year-old Benny Wesley. Fiddling with the dial of his radio, he is surprised to have a customer. The bar is actually the converted balcony to his house. What's on the menu? Benny shrugs then shouts indoors. His wife yells out the day's specials (which never change): ‘fish and potatoes'. I want to ask whether he knows there is an age restriction on entering a bar (let alone running one) but I don't bother. In Brazil, there are few restrictions regarding marriage. But a month out from the birth of his child, Benny looks as bored and indifferent as any teenager stuck in a one-horizon town.

‘My children will be happy here,' Benny says while serving me a slice of cake his wife baked last week. She shows her face through beads in the doorway and looks me over. She is nineteen and his cousin. I admire their tenacity. Industrial progress has failed here, but they are optimistic about the future, whatever that is going to be.

Fordlandia is not unique. On this dreary morning I realised Fordlandia was not alone. Development along this path has become a Brazilian fixation, acquired from the thinking of its masters. Whether it is roads (the Transamazonia highway), dams (the proposed Belo Monte), cities (Brasilia) or industry (Fordlandia), the zeal to construct is conceived in the Brazilian mind well before it is etched into the landscape. All it takes is a whisper in the ear from America or Europe.

But what could Benny's children ever find here, I wonder, to make them happy? The landscape contains only derelict buildings, ramshackle bungalows and few – if any – social services. The golf course and attendant clubhouse offer little for the young. I suspect nothing much changes. Archival photos circa 1940 display a Ford car unable to grip the road, stranded in mud then left to decay. And the cars are still decaying in front of me. A Volkswagon passes in the street, easily overtaking the clapped-out dinosaurs. It seems that, in Fordlandia, Aesop's tale of an ungainly tortoise overtaking the swift hare has upgraded to the Iron Age. Benny turns up the volume and begins singing. I say goodbye, knowing his hope for the future is pure wish-fulfilment. No one here stays willingly. In this dead-end town, all the ghosts have fled, even if their Fords couldn't. ♦