The American Confederacy is still alive in a small Brazilian city called Americana

Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

When the American Confederacy lost the Civil War in May 1865, 10,000 Southerners fled the US for a small city in Brazil, where they could rebuild their lives and carry on their traditions.

Now, 150 years later, their story has been seemingly erased from the history books.

But deep in the heart of Brazil, descendants of these confederate expats gather annually to celebrate their controversial history and maintain their traditions and culture. In 2015, Vice’s Mimi Dwyer attended the festival and revealed what life is like in the city called Americana.

Each year, the small Brazilian city of Americana throws a huge celebration to commemorate the 10,000 Confederates who fled the American South after their side lost the Civil War.

They settled in Americana in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, which remains a sort of enclave for the long-dead expats’ descendants.

The photos can cause discomfort, as they are a reminder of the events that led to the Civil War. But for the 2,000 Brazilians in attendance, the American South is part of their heritage.

The “Confederados” don’t appear in most history books. But 150 years ago, people from Texas, Alabama, and Georgia sailed to Brazil in hopes of preserving the ways of the unreconstructed South.

Brazil welcomed the defectors. For years, it had tried and failed to catch up with agricultural development in the US. Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil hoped to plant the seeds of prosperity by importing these self-exiling Southerners.

The Brazilian government set up informational agencies across the Bible Belt and offered to pay relocation costs for all Americans willing to make the move.

Confederates saw emigration as an opportunity to rebuild their lives. In Brazil, they could buy land on the cheap and rebuild their plantations with the help of then-legal slaves.

More than 10,000 Americans fled for this promising new world, but many failed to adjust. They planted crops that wouldn’t grow in Brazil’s tropical climate. The circumstances forced many to move to cities and abandon their dreams of owning plantations.

However, one group of settlers led by a colonel from Alabama introduced cotton to the countryside of São Paulo, Brazil. Their tribe flourished.

In the little community they named Americana, the children spoke English with a Southern accent for generations. They eventually married into the local population.

The population grew to 200,000, and their Brazilian identity took over. Their American heritage was reduced to Western movies and country music, which they still enjoyed.

For the last 25 years, the descendants of the Confederados gather for the annual “festa” of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, a sort of brotherhood.

Brazilians account for most attendees, although the party will draw Confederate enthusiasts from as far as Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The men often wear gray Rebel uniforms.

And the women twirl in kitschy handmade hoop skirts.

Couples dance across a Confederate flag-painted stage to the sounds of battle hymns, country music, fiddles, and banjos.

Beer, burgers, fried chicken, and Southern barbecue fuel partygoers into the night.

 

Attendees have the chance to buy Southern paraphernalia including aprons, quilts, and commemorative glasses from a booth — using fake Confederate dollar bills.

It’s customary to visit a graveyard in the middle of a sugarcane field where Confederate flags mark the graves of the early immigrants.

Many of the tombstones say something like, “Born: Texas. Died: Brazil.”

Artifacts from the early settlers are on display at the nearby Immigrant Museum in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste.

A monument immortalizes the names of the first families who settled in Americana.

Today, their descendants look upon the Confederate flag not as an emblem of racism and slavery but as a symbol of something their ancestors held dear to their hearts.

Read more stories on Business Insider, Malaysian edition of the world’s fastest-growing business and technology news website.

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