Confederados
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The Confederados are a cultural sub-group in the nation of Brazil. They are the descendants of Confederate soldiers who fled to Brazil with their families after the American Civil War.
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[edit] Original Confederados
At the end of the American Civil War, Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil was interested in having cotton crops due to the high prices and through Masonry contacts, recruited experienced cotton farmers for his nation. Dom Pedro offered the potential immigrants subsidies and tax breaks. General Robert E. Lee advised Southerners not to flee to South America but many ignored his advice and set out to establish a new life away from the destruction of war. Many Southerners who took the Emperor's offer had lost their land during the war, were unwilling to live under a conquering army, or simply did not expect an improvement in the South's economic position. In addition, Brazil would not outlaw slavery until 1888. Although a number of historians say that the existence of slavery was an appeal, Alcides Gussi, an independent researcher of Campinas University, found that only four families owned a total of 66 slaves from 1868 to 1875. So, it is an established fact that the immigrants did not revert to large-scale, slave-intensive agriculture. Most of the immigrants were from the states of Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina.
It is unknown just how many immigrants came to Brazil as refugees from the war, but an unpublished research in the Rio de Janeiro Port by Betty Antunes de Oliveira counts some 9,000 Americans that entered Brazil from 1865-1875. Of those, an unknown number returned to the United States as conditions improved there. Many immigrants renounced their American citizenship and adopted Brazilian citizenship.
The immigrants settled in various places in Brazil ranging from the urban areas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to the northern Amazon region. But most of the Confederados settled in the area around present-day Santa Bárbara D'Oeste and Americana, Brazil near São Paulo, derived from the name Vila dos Americanos. This was the name given by natives in the region due to its American population.
The first original Confederados known to arrive was Colonel William H. Norris of Alabama—the colony at Santa Bárbara D'Oeste is sometimes called the Norris Colony.
Dom Pedro's program was judged a success for both the immigrants and the Brazilian government. The settlers brought with them modern agricultural techniques and new crops such as watermelon, and pecans that soon spread among the native Brazilian farmers. Some foods of the American South also crossed over and became part of general Brazilian culture such as chess pie, vinegar pie, and southern fried chicken.
The original Confederados continued many elements of American culture and established the first Baptist churches in Brazil. They also established public schools and provided education to their female children, which was unusual in Brazil at the time. The Confederados also founded Colégio Internacional in Campinas and the Escola Americana in São Paulo to provide higher education to their children. The Confederados surprisingly allowed blacks to attend their schools and learn to read and write which was considered somewhat scandalous at the time.
[edit] Descendants of the immigrants
The first generation of Confederados remained an insular community, but by the third generation, most of the families had intermarried with native Brazilians or immigrants of other origins. Descendants of the Confederados increasingly spoke the Portuguese language and identified themselves as Brazilians. As the area around Santa Bárbara d'Oeste and Americana turned increasingly to the production of sugar cane and society became more mobile, the Confederados drifted to cities. Today, only a few descendant families still live on the original land owned by their ancestors. The descendants of the original Confederados are mostly scattered throughout Brazil but maintain the headquarters of their descendant organization at the Campo Cemetery, in Santa Bárbara D'Oeste.
The descendants still foster a connection with their history through the Fraternity of American Descendants, a descendant organization dedicated to preserving the unique mixed culture. The Confederados also have an annual festival, called the Festa Confederada which is dedicated to fund the Campo Cemetery. The festival is marked by Confederate flags, traditional dress of Confederate uniforms and hoop skirts, food of the American south with a Brazilian flair, and dances and music popular in the American south during the antebellum period. The descendants maintain affection for the Confederate flag even though they all consider themselves completely Brazilian. Modern Confederados distance themselves from any of the racial controversies.
In Brazil the Confederate flag has not previously had the racial stigma that has been attached to it in the United States. Many descendants are of mixed race and reflect the varied racial categories that make up Brazilian society in their physical appearance. Recently the Brazilian residents of Americana, now of primarily Italian-descent, have removed the Confederate flag from the city's crest citing the fact that Confederados now make up only 10 percent of the city's population. The Confederate flag was associated with the city in the wake of Jimmy Carter's visit to the region.
Many Confederados have traveled to the United States at the invitation of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an American descendant's organization, to visit Civil War battlefields, attend reenactments, or see where their ancestors lived in the US.
The center of Confederado culture is the Campo Cemetery in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, where most of the original Confederados from the region were buried. Due to their Protestant religion, they established their own cemetery. The Confederado community has also established a Museum of Immigration at Santa Bárbara d'Oeste to present the history of Brazilian immigration and highlight its benefits to the nation.
In 1972 Then Governor (and future President) Jimmy Carter of Georgia visited the city of Americana and visited the grave of his wife Rosalyn's great-uncle who was one of the original Confederados.
[edit] Sociological aspects
The Confederados have been mostly forgotten over the years, but in recent years some limited studies have been conducted on the influence the Confederado immigration had on Brazil and Latin America as a whole.
The Conferados have been the focus of a few books, The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil edited by Cyrus B. Dawsey, and The Lost Colony of the Confederacy by Eugene C. Harter. William Griggs wrote a book on the failed Iguape Colony, published by the University of Texas The Elusive Eden. They are also included in Lost White Tribes: Journeys among the Forgotten by Riccardo Orizio (Avril Bardoni, translator) which relates the stories of several such cultural artifacts left behind in the third world as colonialism ended. The Confederados were also the subject of a 1998 American Heritage report (The Deepest South. American Heritage 49(2), April 1998. Pages 84-95). Judith McKnight Jones, a descendant, also wrote a book in Portuguese that brings an insider's account on the immigration and family trees. It lists some 400 families. Alcides Fernando Gussi also wrote a Master's degree paper that materialized into a book, named Os Norte-Americanos Confederados do Brasil. Auburn University maintains a special collection of material related to the Confederado immigration including correspondence, memoirs, genealogies, and newspaper clippings related to the original immigrants especially the family of Colonel Norris.
