I had found an in-depth write=up about Fordlandia a few years ago. As I recall it, the facts were as follows:
1. Fordlandia was based on Henry Ford's idea of controlling all aspects of automobile manufacture including controlling sources of raw materials. Frod wanted to have his own source of rubber, so invested in a huge tract of land in Brazil to start a rubber plantation and rubber production plant. Unfortunately, no one at Ford did their homework, as it turned out the climate & soil conditions in that part of Brazil were absolutely wrong for any growth of rubber trees. Despite their best efforts at clearing the forests and planting rubber trees, there was little real yield of the sap needed to produce rubber.
2. Henry Ford was a very opinionated and hard headed individual. He was suspicious of "foreigners", and in his plants, did his best to "Americanize" the workforce. In the case of Fordlandia, Ford was up against established Brazilian culture. The Brazilian workforce was used to working in the early morning hours, then taking a lunch break and siesta until the afternoon. This was to avoid working in the hottest part of the days, and using their system, the Brazilians would put in a full day of work and then some. Ford would not hear of this and had required the local workforce to work on the same sort of clock as the workforce in the Rouge was on. This caused quite a bit of discontent.
3. Ford insisted on a cafeteria style of mess hall to feed the workers at Fordlandia, and insisted the kitchens serve only American style foods. In Ford's case, this was about as bland and unimaginative a diet as could be had. It was a stark contrast to the Brazilian diet (and having worked in South America and ate with the crews, I can say the local diet was a whole lot better than white bread and mayonnaise and processed lunch meat). Needless to say, the insistence on this bland American diet in the cafeteria was one of the final straws. The rebellion at Fordlandia is said to have started in the mess hall as the workforce was plainly fed up with Ford's ideas as to working hours and food. In addition, Ford insisted the workforce be "Americanized" and aside from requiring them to take classes to learn English, he went so far as to dictate what sort or recreation and social activities were going to happen in Fordlandia. Henry Ford had almost Puritanical ideas about many things, and modern music and dancing (for the times he lived in) were something he looked upon as causing moral decay. Ford insisted people learn to do the kinds of dances that might have been popular when he was a boy or young man. The result was Brazilians were being told that in their free time, they were going to learn to square dance. The Brazilians have their own lively music and folk dances as well as more modern dances, but Ford's people banned them. Ford's people insisted the children in Fordlandia learn English, learn American folk songs, and similar. When a local workforce is told their culture is all wrong and another culture is forced upon them, this does not go over too well for too long.
Ford was always a controlling man, and he had no sense of the Brazilian spirit and culture. He had his management try to Americanize the Brazilian workforce IN BRAZIL to suit his ideas. Between picking some of the worst possible country to try to start a rubber plantation and his efforts to Americanize the Brazilians, his Fordlandia idea failed entirely in a relatively short time.
As I said, I worked "in country" on jobs in South America, and lived and ate with crews of local mechanics and other crafts. Simple fare, imaginatively cooked with some good seasonings was usually the order of the day. To this day, when my wife and I are wanting a quick meal for supper, my wife will ask me to make some black beans and rice. The Brazilians, as do the other peoples in South America have a developed culture and have their own social customs, music, and much else. Henry Ford refused to accept or respect it, claiming his idea of "Americanization" was the best and only way. He got his when the workforce at Fordlandia rebelled, and a sure way to ignite simmering tensions into a full blown riot is to serve people slop they can't stand after riding roughshod on them. Reportedly, from what I'd read, there was a full blown riot in the mess hall, with people throwing the food back at the American Ford management, followed by mass resignations. After that, the workforce quit en mass. That, combined with no success at cultivating rubber trees spelled the end of Fordlandia. It was stillborn for all practical purposes.
Henry Ford had a deep mistrust of anyone who was not his idea of a person. Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and people from places other than England, Scotland, Ireland, or Northern Europe were people Ford not only mis trusted, but looked down upon. In the Ford plants, he had a whole set of departments to work on Americanizing these groups of people. Investigations into how an employee lived at home, what their personal habits were, what church they went to, what groups they were members of were all investigated by Ford's snoops. If an employee was of the "wrong" ethnicity, they tried to Americanize him, and if his personal habits in his off hours did not coincide with Ford's ideas, the employee was fired. Ford brought this mentality to Brazil and it backfired on him. With his mistrust of "Foreigners", Ford would never have done the logical thing before starting on Fordlandia: hire a few South American agronomists or experts in the field of cultivating rubber trees and producing raw rubber.
Ford got his, and he had it coming. Having worked amongst South Americans and gone up and back over the border between Paraguay and Brazil and lived amongst the people, my sympathies are with the workforce at Fordlandia.