The South Will Rise Again (Part II)

Today I walked through a cemetery decorated with Confederate flags, tucked under a grove of pine and palm trees in the middle of a sugar cane field.  Patsy Cline was singing "Walkin' After Midnight" and people in antebellum dresses were sitting in the shade, eating fried chicken and biscuits.  "Where am I and what is happening?!?" I kept thinking. 

Several weeks ago a few friends and I visited the Museu da Imigração in the town of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, a museum dedicated to the small but concentrated group of immigrants from the southern part of the United States who came to Brazil just after the end of the American Civil War.  Though small in number compared to settlers from other parts of the world, the Confederados influence on the area - non-Catholic churches, certain fried foods - remains to this day.

As does the divisive Confederate Flag.  However, where this is often seen as a symbol of racism and ignorance in the US, Brazilian descendants of the original Confederados see it simply as the representation of the land their ancestors came from, much like a third generation Italian may still feel pride hoisting an Italian flag.  When the Confederados left home for the last time, in their minds they were leaving this country; despite the fact that they lost the war, they carried the symbol with them to represent where they came from.

Many generations later the Fraternidade Descendência Americana (Fraternity of American Descendants) hosts an annual Festa Confederada (Confederate Party) as a fundraiser for their organization's community projects.  The kicker is that the the event is held in a cemetery where the original Confederados are buried.  (At the time, the Catholic church wouldn't allow these non-Catholics to use the Catholic cemetery so they started one on a piece of land outside of town on a farm.)

Becca and Jason model the theme of the festival.  I feel it needs a hashtag.

A group of us Gringos - some southerners, a couple Yanks, a Brit, and a few Canucks - ventured out to the cemetery to see what this was all about.  I went in with no expectations.  I left feeling like I had stepped through some Twilighty Zone where nothing bad happened.  I may be being dramatic but I still have the initial gut reaction of discomfort when I see a Confederate flag, half expecting to see a sea of pillow case headdresses and flaming torches, so the shear abundance of them was disconcerting.  In the end, it was strangely just part of the decor.  I couldn't complain about the people-watching either!

Festival paraphernalia.
Even the "tickets" used to buy food were faux-Confederate dollars.

Yeah, I don't think I'll be running for public office with this photo
floating around the interwebs...

The presentation of the old Confederate states' flags.
Please note the stage floor...as if it could be missed!

The oldest tombstones dated back to the late 1860's. 

Great people watching; I became unapologetically paparazzi-esque.

And what Confederate festival wouldn't be complete without some southern rock?

The South Will Rise Again (Part I)

Brazil is a diverse country.  This is evident in the food, music, dance, and faces of its people.  Brazil claims Portuguese, German, Italian, Lebanese, and Japanese in its melting pot of foreign immigrants.  But there was a time when a significant number of (ex) Americans were making their way to the southern hemisphere in droves.

A little known piece of history about the settling of Brazil has direct ties to the Civil War in the United States.  After the Confederates lost the battle to secede from the Union, and thus the right to keep slaves, the economy was not exactly healthy and many once comfortable families were then struggling.  In stepped Brazil, wanting to increase its own agriculture and economy by enticing new potential citizens - of the "right" color and breeding, essentially - to move and help settle Brazil.

Thus, beginning in 1866, most of these "Confederados" began settling in what is now the state of São Paulo, around the municipality of Campinas, as it was one of the few parts of the country where Catholicism was not the dominant faith.  Here Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist, Episcopalian, and other Protestant communities were in abundance.  This became especially true of Santa Bárbara D'Oeste and the neighboring, appropriately named Americana, both of which still exist today.

"Nationalities of Immigrants Entering São Paulo State from 1827-1936"
The Ex-Americans would likely have been classified as "não especificados"
as many of them did not identify with the United States of America as it was.
Also, the total of Confederado immigrants was only about 10,000 people.

To oversimplify things would be to say that these Confederates were bitter about losing their right to slaves and moved to some place that still allowed them, however, most of these immigrants were too poor to afford slaves once they got here and ended up working the land themselves for wealthier land owners, though in better conditions than the existing slave workforce. Nevertheless, their presence brought increased population and progress to the area, as these new immigrants brought with them their Southern traditions and agricultural methods.  Ironically, slavery became illegal in Brazil less than twenty years from when the Confederados first arrived.

In what was once an old town jail in Santa Bárbara D'Oeste, today stands the Museu da Imigração, a small testament to the reason why the Confederate flag can still be seen in a country thousands of miles and a continent away from where it was conceived.  In fact, there is a festival* in April of each year - in the cemetery where most of these immigrants are buried, no less - celebrating the bygone antebellum days.  (Herein lies "Part II"...)

Top: A baseball team composed of Confederados and their descendants
circa 1900.  Bottom: A Confederate $2 bill. The museum had many remnants
of life, such as this, likely brought with during the migration and left in the
bottom of drawers and closets for future relatives to find.

*I highly recommend checking out the website (As a Yankee northerner - redundant? - I enjoy the "Heritage, Not Hate" part.)