Between Rust Belt and Rainforest: Empire, Extraction, and the Architecture of Vila Serra do Navio

The built environment of Amazonia is more deeply connected to the United States—particularly Pennsylvania—than is often acknowledged. This relationship emerges from the geopolitics of resource extraction that fueled the Industrial Revolution and signaled the shift of global power from the British to the US Empire. In both Amazonia and the U.S., overlapping systems of governance, infrastructure, and architecture produced landscapes shaped by cycles of capital influx and withdrawal, environmental degradation, and the marginalization of Indigenous communities. These parallel dynamics directly link Amazonian “development” to the industrial legacy of the American Rust Belt, as exemplified by U.S.-backed ventures such as the Indústria e Comércio de Minérios (ICOMI).

This paper explores these entanglements through the case of Vila Serra do Navio, a company town built for manganese mining in the Brazilian state of Amapá. Central to this project was Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Pennsylvania, which co-owned ICOMI—holding 49% to Brazil’s 51%—to extract manganese deemed critical during the Cold War. Designed in the late 1940s by Brazilian modernist architect Oswaldo Arthur Bratke, the town featured timber construction adapted for climate and disease control, while its spatial layout reinforced labor hierarchies. Time magazine dubbed it “Suburbia in the Jungle,” likening it to a U.S. suburb rather than a remote settlement. ICOMI’s operations included major infrastructure projects such as railroads, ports, and river dredging. Governed outside the authority of local Indigenous groups, such as the Wayãpi, the enclave propagated narratives of progress and industrial modernity through both company propaganda and physical form.