In Brazil: Echoes from the Confederacy

By Michael Kepp/Americana

In a small pastoral pavilion a minister, flanked by a Confederate flag, conducts a memorial service for the sons and daughters of the Old South who are buried in the adjacent cemetery. The scent of warm corn bread and fried chicken wafts from a nearby picnic table. Strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic float with gentle familiarity through the heavy air. Only the fact that it is sung in Portuguese seems inappropriate. But, in fact, it is fitting because this get-together occurs some 5,000 miles below the Mason-Dixon line, just outside a southern Brazilian city called Americana.

Four times a year, more than 200 members of the Fraternidade Descendencia Americana (FDA), the Fraternity of American Descendants, travel here to renew ties and remember their ancestors who fled the South right after the Civil War rather than live under Reconstruction. Despite their Brazilian residence, they have kept their American roots. Although they are fluent in Portuguese, English is often spoken at home. Along with hammocks and fried bananas, these folks are fond of their rocking chairs and sweet potato pie. Fourth of July barbecues are a tradition too.

Some 3,500 Confederate refugees left their pillared mansions and plantations between 1866 and 1867 in what was one of history's more notable organized exoduses of Americans. Immigrants, especially those from the Deep South, were drawn by the promise of cheap land, a booming cotton industry and the existence of slavery, which was tolerated in Brazil until 1888. But not all of them succeeded in making a life here. Tropical diseases, drought and the remoteness of their settlements drove back 80% of the refugees.

Only in the fertile soil of Sao Paulo state near what is now Americana did the transplanted prewar Dixie ways take hold. Still, the 94 Confederate ) families who stayed, their fortunes depleted, found homesteading a humbling experience. Few could afford the number of slaves they had back home. "When my mother was a girl here, she picked cotton right alongside the slaves, something she didn't do in Arkansas," drawls Charlotte Ferguson Costarelli, 83, a third-generation descendant.

Other immigrants came prepared for such adversity. William Mills of Texas, who had heard Brazil was full of wild animals, brought his four hunting dogs on the boat to Rio. "Granddad was smart to do so," pipes up Rancher Sydney Mills, 70, wearing a straw sombrero, braided string tie and cowboy boots. "The dogs would often chase and tree pumas that raided the backyard chicken coop, and Granddad would down them with his shotgun. He killed over a dozen in all."

Brazilian farmers readily embraced such Rebel contributions as the kerosene lamp and the steel-blade plow, a godsend to a country that hadn't got past the simple hoe. The Southern missionaries whom the settlers hired as teachers also had a lasting impact. The educational tradition they began is one reason that Americana has only a 14% illiteracy rate in a country where one-fourth of the population cannot read or write.

Today Americana's population has swelled to 160,000, largely owing to waves of Portuguese, Italian and Japanese immigrants who came to Brazil. It looks like any other small Brazilian city. A tiny cluster of taller office buildings dwarfs a semi-industrial sprawl. Intermarriage has turned today's generation of Confederate descendants into darker-skinned Brazilians.

Time has not broken the lingering connection these six generations have with the U.S. "I got only American blood in my veins, but I'm Brazilian through and through," crows ex-Farmer Claude McFadden, 90, the oldest living Confederate descendant. "Still, I've always felt a little split, like I'll never feel completely at home here." As middle-class Brazilians besieged by high inflation, most of the descendants marvel at the economic stability and the myriad modern conveniences the U.S. has to offer. "All those electric gadgets that make housework easy must give women a lot of free time," muses Anna Vaughan Zacarchenko, 70, who married a farmer from the Soviet Union.

The few who can afford a visit to what some call their grandmother country don't all return charmed. "On my first visits I was shocked by all the slums and poverty," says George Hunnicutt, 63, great-grandson of the Confederate colony's first doctor. "So last year, when I took my grandchildren there, I decided to show them the storybook side of America. We went to Disney World, Epcot Center and Sea World."

After the memorial service, there is a picnic and church bazaar. While women swap dessert recipes and sewing hints, men exchange investment tips and talk soccer. Everybody gossips. Weightier topics are also touched on: AIDS, the Persian Gulf war, Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's recent Brazilian tour. What distinguishes the occasion is its civility. Even the singing of hymns at the service seems contained. Perhaps the restraint stems partly from the absence of hard liquor and beer. "As practicing Protestants, many of us think alcohol is unholy and unhealthy," says John Homer Steagall, 68, a retired Singer sewing-machine general manager. "So drinking at the reunion is highly frowned upon."

Keeping the faith is one way descendants, particularly the older ones, so mindfully tend ancestral memories. "Preserving our heritage helps us hold on to cherished values and pass them on to future generations," said the FDA's official historian, Judith MacKnight Jones, 71. She has chronicled the Confederate immigration to Brazil in a book titled Soldado Descansa (Soldier Rest). With a certainty that transcends national labels, she adds, "And that's important in a world where values are changing for the worse."