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.
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"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"...)
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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.)
