The 20,000 Confederates who fled to Brazil... and Henry Ford

Banned Histories of Race in America

If you happen to be wandering around Sao Paolo, Brazil sometime in late April and find yourself near the Cemeterio do Campo or the Cemetery of the Field, you might be surprised at what you see. Maybe not at first. At first, you might only notice that you’d stumbled onto a lively festival. Joining the group of thousands, you might notice that this was not just a local gathering, but also clearly a tourist destination. It might take a moment for it to sink in just how many of these Portuguese-speaking folks are dressed in period costume of the American Confederate South. Perhaps you’d see the men in accurate graycoat military garb and the women in elaborately sewn hoopskirts and focus on even finer details, like how merchants and customers were selling and buying with imitation Confederate currency…

But, probably not. You’d probably see the preposterous amount of confederate flags from far across a Brazilian field and wonder whether or not you were still asleep. Unfortunately, the Festa Confederada is very real, it still happens every year and it celebrates a history few Americans know.

Just look at these goddamn fools.

Because the confederates weren’t too cool about losing the Civil War, many of them relocated to Brazil. And when I say many, I’m talking about 20,000 of them. That’s a lot of racists! And since Brazil wouldn’t abolish slavery for twenty years or so after the US, a lot of those 20,000 racists abducted newly-freed Black people as they left, legally enslaving them a second time.