For decades, foreign corporations established settlements in the Brazilian Amazon to support extractive activities such as rubber tapping, manganese mining, and pulp production. When projects failed, companies left, abandoning buildings and workers. Photographer Christian Braga documents these ghost towns, where nature slowly reclaims the land and residents’ belongings remain as reminders of once-thriving communities.
Fordlândia and the rubber boom
In 1928, Ford built a warehouse in Fordlândia, on the banks of the Tapajós River in Pará state, to produce rubber for the US market. The town was one of several corporate settlements—including Serra do Navio, Laranjal do Jari, Marituba, and Velho Airão—founded to extract raw materials with no regard for the forest or its people. When the rubber project failed, Ford abandoned the town, leaving behind ruins now engulfed by strangler figs and vines.
Industrial relics overtaken by jungle
In Velho Airão, Amazonas state, a ruined building is enveloped by a strangler fig, and ghostly marks from a climbing vine scar an old wall. These towns primarily served to extract commodities like manganese, latex, and timber. Workers’ badges from Ford’s subsidiary, Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil, are among the few artifacts left. Even after corporations left towns such as Nova Olinda do Norte, Belterra, Monte Dourado, Santana, Pedra Branca do Amapari, and Serra do Navio, some residents remained.
Railways and transport networks
The remains of railway lines that once carried manganese ore between Serra do Navio and Santana in Amapá state serve as reminders of the transport networks that shaped the Amazon during the 20th century. Old railway infrastructure in Santana from the Icomi mineral extraction project contributed to the formation of Amapá state.
Daniel Ludwig’s failed pulp mill
One of the most ambitious Amazonian projects involved Daniel Ludwig, then one of the world’s wealthiest men. He constructed an entire pulp factory in Japan, transported it across the ocean on a floating barge, and docked it in Laranjal do Jari in Amapá. The decades-long project, beginning in the 1960s and costing more than $1bn, ended in failure. Much of the factory remains, including a tailings reservoir of waste from the Jari pulp mill, illustrating environmental damage from one of the world’s most polluting industries. The exit gate of the abandoned Jari Celulose plant nursery reads “Bom descanso” (good rest).
Hydroelectric and agricultural scars
The company Eletronorte stuffed and displayed animals that died during construction of the Tucuruí hydroelectric power plant in Pará state in the 1980s. A cemetery stands in the monoculture desolation of a soya plantation in Belterra, Pará state. In Vila Cristalino, the ruins of a small family home built from “Volkswagen-standard” bricks date to the 1970s, when Companhia Vale do Rio Cristalino, owned by VW, occupied more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) in the southeastern Amazon. The carmaker’s estate, promoted as a model of modern agriculture and livestock ranching, became a symbol of environmental and labour conflicts.
Remnants of inequality and conservation
A swimming pool built exclusively for foreign professionals who held senior positions at Icomi remains in Serra do Navio. The town, designed by architect Oswaldo Arthur Bratke and listed by the Brazilian National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage, contrasts with the devastated landscape around it. An abandoned sugar mill overtaken by nature sits in Medicilândia, Pará state. The forest envelops a building in what was formerly a Pirelli rubber estate, now designated the Metropolis of the Amazon wildlife refuge, an environmental conservation area in Marituba, Pará state.
