A Ferrovia do Diabo: 21 mil homens, 50 nacionalidades e uma obra que ficou pronta tarde demais
O Brasil Que foi
57 views
January 31, 1878, 6:45 AM. Off the coast of North Carolina, in the United States, the steamship Metropolis runs aground en route to Brazil. Eighty-five people die, among them workers hired to build a railroad in the middle of the Amazon. No rails had been laid. And the construction had already claimed lives.
Thirty-two years later, this railroad brought together more than 21,000 men of about 50 nationalities: Barbadians, Spaniards, Portuguese, people from Ceará, Bolivians, and many others. It became known as the Devil's Railroad and was born as part of the price Brazil paid for Acre.
This documentary shows what life was like for those who built the Madeira-Mamoré Railroad: the work in the forest, the daily quinine, the Candelária hospital, the Saturday dances, and the Barbadian cricket. And it reveals why the famous legend of "one death per sleeper" is wrong, and why the truth is even harder to accept.
In this documentary you will discover:
Why Brazil committed to building a railroad in the middle of the jungle
The failed attempts and the shipwreck that killed workers before the first rail was laid
What daily life was like for men of 50 nationalities on the construction site
What Oswaldo Cruz found when he visited the site in 1910
The lives of the Barbadians who founded a neighborhood in Porto Velho
How many actually died, and why the railroad was completed too late
Chapters:
00:00 Before the first rail
01:41 The river that nobody crossed
05:24 The arrival of 21,000 men
08:11 This is what the work was like
11:07 The doctor who measured the fever
13:34 Life off the tracks
16:19 The arrival of the tracks, and the problem
18:47 The legend and the bill
20:55 What remained
22:53 What this story says about the Brazil
Sources:
FERREIRA, Manoel Rodrigues. The Devil's Railway (1959; ed. 2005)
HARDMAN, Francisco Foot. Ghost Train: the Madeira-Mamoré Railway and modernity in the jungle (2005)
CRUZ, Oswaldo. General considerations on the sanitary conditions of the Madeira River (1910) — Oswaldo Cruz House/Fiocruz
National Library — Brasiliana Fotográfica: "Rails over the forest" (photographs by Dana Merrill)
TOMLINSON, H. M. The Sea and the Jungle (1912)
Academic articles: Canoa do Tempo Magazine (UFAM); Bulletin of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi; studies on the Antilleans of Porto Velho and the Candelária Cemetery
The images in this video are cinematic reconstructions created with artificial intelligence to illustrate the era. The facts narrated are based on the listed sources. In memory of the thousands of workers who built the Madeira-Mamoré Railway.
#MadeiraMamoré #Devil'sRailroad #HistoryOfBrazil #Amazon #TheBrazilThatWas
A Ferrovia do Diabo: 21 mil homens, 50 nacionalidades e uma obra que ficou pronta tarde demais
O Brasil Que foi
57 views
January 31, 1878, 6:45 AM. Off the coast of North Carolina, in the United States, the steamship Metropolis runs aground en route to Brazil. Eighty-five people die, among them workers hired to build a railroad in the middle of the Amazon. No rails had been laid. And the construction had already claimed lives.
Thirty-two years later, this railroad brought together more than 21,000 men of about 50 nationalities: Barbadians, Spaniards, Portuguese, people from Ceará, Bolivians, and many others. It became known as the Devil's Railroad and was born as part of the price Brazil paid for Acre.
This documentary shows what life was like for those who built the Madeira-Mamoré Railroad: the work in the forest, the daily quinine, the Candelária hospital, the Saturday dances, and the Barbadian cricket. And it reveals why the famous legend of "one death per sleeper" is wrong, and why the truth is even harder to accept.
In this documentary you will discover:
Why Brazil committed to building a railroad in the middle of the jungle
The failed attempts and the shipwreck that killed workers before the first rail was laid
What daily life was like for men of 50 nationalities on the construction site
What Oswaldo Cruz found when he visited the site in 1910
The lives of the Barbadians who founded a neighborhood in Porto Velho
How many actually died, and why the railroad was completed too late
Chapters:
00:00 Before the first rail
01:41 The river that nobody crossed
05:24 The arrival of 21,000 men
08:11 This is what the work was like
11:07 The doctor who measured the fever
13:34 Life off the tracks
16:19 The arrival of the tracks, and the problem
18:47 The legend and the bill
20:55 What remained
22:53 What this story says about the Brazil
Sources:
FERREIRA, Manoel Rodrigues. The Devil's Railway (1959; ed. 2005)
HARDMAN, Francisco Foot. Ghost Train: the Madeira-Mamoré Railway and modernity in the jungle (2005)
CRUZ, Oswaldo. General considerations on the sanitary conditions of the Madeira River (1910) — Oswaldo Cruz House/Fiocruz
National Library — Brasiliana Fotográfica: "Rails over the forest" (photographs by Dana Merrill)
TOMLINSON, H. M. The Sea and the Jungle (1912)
Academic articles: Canoa do Tempo Magazine (UFAM); Bulletin of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi; studies on the Antilleans of Porto Velho and the Candelária Cemetery
The images in this video are cinematic reconstructions created with artificial intelligence to illustrate the era. The facts narrated are based on the listed sources. In memory of the thousands of workers who built the Madeira-Mamoré Railway.
#MadeiraMamoré #Devil'sRailroad #HistoryOfBrazil #Amazon #TheBrazilThatWas