Fordlandia by Greg Grandin Page B

meant they couldn’t spend their money where they wanted. It also meant they had to form a line outside the dining hall door so that office clerks could take attendance, jotting badge numbers in their roll book. But the arrangement seemed to be working.

    Then on December 20, Chester Coleman arrived in the camp to oversee the kitchens. Before having spent even a day at Fordlandia, he suggested that the plantation do away with waiter service. Fresh from his job as foreman at River Rouge, with its assembly lines and conveyor belts, Coleman proposed having all the men line up for their food “cafeteria-style.” Rogge agreed, and the change went into effect on the twenty-second. Rogge also charged the unpopular Kaj Ostenfeld, who worked in the payroll office, with the job of deducting the cost of meals from workers’ salaries and with making sure that the new plan went smoothly. Dearborn believed Ostenfeld a man of “unquestioned honesty,” though they did think he could use some refinement and suggested that at some point he be brought to Detroit for “further development.” Workers had long been unhappy with his condescending, provocative manner. 9

    During the first hour or so, eight hundred men made it in and out without a problem. Ostenfeld, though, heard some of the skilled mechanics and foremen complain. “When they came from work,” he said, they expected to “to sit down at the table and be served by the waiters”—and not be forced to wait on line and eat with the common laborers. As the line began to bunch up, the complaints grew sharper. “We are not dogs,” someone protested, “that are going to be ordered by the company to eat in this way.” The sweltering heat didn’t help matters. The old mess hall had been made of thatch, with half-open walls and a tall, airy A-frame roof that while rustic looking was well ventilated. The new hall was concrete, with a squat roof made of asbestos, tar, and galvanized metal that trapped heat, turning the building into an oven. 10
    Cooks had trouble keeping the food coming and the clerks took too much time recording the badge numbers. Outside, workers pushed against the entrance trying to get in. Inside, those waiting for food crowded around the harried servers, who couldn’t ladle the rice and fish onto plates fast enough. It was then that Manuel Caetano de Jesus, a thirty-five-year-old brick mason from the coastal state of Rio Grande do Norte, forced his way into the hall and confronted Ostenfeld. There was already animosity between the two men from past encounters, and as their words grew heated, workers in dirty shirts and ratty straw hats and smelling of a day’s hard work gathered round. Ostenfeld knew some Portuguese from his previous work at Rio’s Ford dealership. But that didn’t mean he fully understood de Jesus, who most likely spoke fast and with a thick working-class north Brazilian accent. Often Ford men had just enough Portuguese to get by, which could be a dangerous thing, creating situations where both parties might easily mistake obtuseness for hostility. In any case, Ostenfeld grasped what it meant when de Jesus took off his badge and handed it to him.

    Ostenfeld laughed. As de Jesus later testified, “it was as if he was making fun,” which “infuriated” those who were standing close by, following the argument. For his part, Ostenfeld claimed that de Jesus turned to the crowd and said: “I have done everything for you, now you can do the rest.” 11
    The response was furious, one observer recounted, like “putting a match to gasoline.” The “horrible noise” of the breaking pots, glass, plates, sinks, tables, and chairs served as a clarion, calling more workers to descend on the mess hall armed with knives, rocks, pipes, hammers, machetes, and clubs. Ostenfeld, along with Coleman, who had watched the whole scene unfold not knowing a word of Portuguese, jumped in a truck to escape. As they sped away to tell Rogge what was