{"id":9139,"date":"2024-12-23T11:03:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9139"},"modified":"2024-12-23T11:03:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:03:22","slug":"how-a-small-brazilian-town-became-an-unlikely-battleground-over-confederate-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9139","title":{"rendered":"How a Small Brazilian Town Became an Unlikely Battleground Over Confederate Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Confederate Festival attendee visits the American cemetery in Santa Barbara d’Oeste, Brazil, on April 24, 2016. Mario Tama\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were no antebellum hoop skirts at the site of Brazil\u2019s annual \u201cFesta Confederada,\u201d or Confederate Festival, in 2024. Flag poles that once flew the Brazilian flag alongside the red, white and blue rebel banner of the American Confederacy stood barren.<\/p>\n

Since 1980, the Confederate Festival<\/a> \u2013 a series of cultural performances and culinary experiences combining Brazilian traditions with those of the American South \u2013 has occurred each April in rural S\u00e3o Paulo State.<\/p>\n

The festival celebrates a mass exodus<\/a> of white American Southerners to Brazil following the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1890 \u2013 dates that roughly reflect when the U.S. and Brazil, respectively, abolished slavery \u2013 8,000 to 10,000<\/a> white American Southerners migrated to the country. They were fleeing the vanquished Confederacy and Reconstruction<\/a> \u2013 the federal government\u2019s effort to reintegrate the South and its 4 million newly freed Black people back into the United States.<\/p>\n

Southern fried chicken and barbecue is typically served at the Confederate Festival alongside Brazilian side dishes such as \u201cfarofa,\u201d or toasted cassava flour. Traditionally, ornately dressed performers cover American country songs and dance the two-step. They present the flags of the 11 Confederate states for thousands of Brazilian tourists and descendants.<\/p>\n

But in an international echo of a movement that has gripped the United States in recent years<\/a>, Confederate symbols are now getting banned in Brazil, too.<\/p>\n

Charlottesville echoes in Brazil<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a geographer<\/a> who analyzes the history and meaning of Confederate symbols in the U.S. and abroad.<\/p>\n

I have been studying<\/a> Brazil\u2019s Confederate Festival since 2017. That\u2019s when a white supremacist murdered the anti-racism protester Heather Heyer<\/a> at the \u201cUnite the Right<\/a>\u201d march in Charlottesville, Virginia.<\/p>\n

The rally opposed the city\u2019s planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heyer\u2019s death had consequences over 4,000 miles away<\/a> in Santa B\u00e1rbara d\u2019Oeste, Brazil \u2013 a country with its own fraught history of racism<\/a>. In 2018 and 2019, Black civil rights activists<\/a> picketed the Confederate Festival.<\/p>\n

The event, organized by the Fraternity of American Descendants<\/a> \u2013 a nonprofit Confederate descendants organization founded in 1954 to maintain \u201cthe historical and cultural heritage of North American immigrants to Brazil\u201d \u2013 had been held largely without controversy for over three decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe indignantly and vehemently repudiate the symbols present at the Festa Confederada,\u201d the protesters said in an April 18, 2019, statement<\/a> written by a local group called UNEGRO and signed by over 100 other civic groups in Brazil.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the festival to shutter. And, soon, George Floyd\u2019s murder reignited a global wave of outrage against symbols of racism and colonialism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A battle over memory<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since 2015, when the Black Lives Matter movement erupted nationwide, at least 113 Confederate statues have been<\/a> removed from cities across the American South.<\/p>\n

But other removal efforts have been thwarted, usually by state lawmakers<\/a>. To keep Confederate statues in place, many Southern states have either passed laws protecting them as historic artifacts or dusted off and enforced old preservation laws.<\/p>\n

For example, when Birmingham, Alabama\u2019s mayor tried to remove the city\u2019s Confederate monument<\/a> in 2019, he was blocked by the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017<\/a>. After a lengthy court battle, the city agreed to pay the state a US$25,000 fine in exchange for the right to remove the memorial.<\/p>\n

Similar \u201cstatue statutes<\/a>\u201d in Tennessee<\/a>, Georgia<\/a> and elsewhere continue to frustrate local efforts to remove monuments that glorify a chapter of American history that many people find painful.<\/p>\n

Protesters in Durham, North Carolina, refused to wait for the state to repeal its preservation law<\/a>. In 2017 they toppled a monument erected in 1924<\/a> \u201cin memory of the boys who wore the gray\u201d themselves.<\/p>\n

Commemoration \u2018with respect\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Around the same time, a similarly contentious debate was roiling the Brazilian city of Santa B\u00e1rbara d\u2019Oeste.<\/p>\n

Soon after Heyer\u2019s death in Charlottesville, UNEGRO organized a public debate<\/a> with the Fraternity of American Descendants on the meaning of the Confederate symbol. The two sides did not find much middle ground. The 2018 and 2019 Confederate Festivals maintained their display of Confederate iconography, and UNEGRO protested them.<\/p>\n

Eventually, UNEGRO asked the city council to revoke the fraternity\u2019s event permit if it kept using the Confederate symbol.<\/p>\n

In January 2021, council member Esther Moraes proposed a new law<\/a> prohibiting the use of symbols \u201cthat support movements or institutions identified with racist or segregationist ideas<\/a>\u201d at public events.<\/p>\n

Moraes did not oppose the Confederate Festival itself, she emphasized.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has the right to commemorate their ancestors,\u201d she said<\/a>, \u201cbut they should do it with respect for the history of other people and the descendants of slavery. Ours is the only city in Brazil where the Confederate symbol flies at a public festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Closed-door debates and public hearings<\/a> followed. In February 2022, the Fraternity of American Descendants hosted the son of Brazil\u2019s then-president, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right ally of Donald Trump. Following his private tour of the group\u2019s museum<\/a>, Eduardo Bolsonaro accused leftist critics of the Confederate Festival<\/a> of \u201crewriting memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Brazilian Black rights activists protest the Confederate Festival in Santa B\u00e1rbara d’Oeste, on April 28, 2019. Courtesy of UNEGRO, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n

City officials passed the law banning Confederate symbols from public events<\/a> in June 2022 anyway. The Fraternity of American Descendants issued a brief statement<\/a> that its Confederate Festival would not take place in 2023, then went quiet.<\/p>\n

In April 2024, instead of its traditional festival, the group held a picnic<\/a> \u201copen to descendants and friends of the Fraternity of American Descendants.\u201d<\/p>\n

The smell of barbecue wafted through the air as Brazilian descendants of the American South filled their plates against a backdrop of Brazil\u2019s first Baptist church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the stage where country line dancers once performed, few traces remained of the red and blue paint that had emblazoned it with the Confederate emblem. The stage was gray.<\/p>\n

In November 2024, the Fraternity of American Descendants announced plans to rebrand and relaunch its flagship festival, likely for April 2025. The Confederate Festival will now be called \u201cFesta dos Americanos\u201d \u2013 Festival of the Americans \u2013 and stripped of all Confederate symbols.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe institution, feeling that it created discomfort for the city and its Black residents, decided to change its position,\u201d said Fraternity of American Descendants President Marcelo Dodson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018This symbol miseducates\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Removing symbols of slavery<\/a> is not, by itself, enough to repair old harms or eliminate ongoing racism. Neither, evidence shows<\/a>, is simply replacing them with new memorials to past victims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet removing Confederate names, flags and symbols from public spaces<\/a> at least cracks open the door for a path forward into a different future. It presents countries an opportunity to grapple with history, instead of repeating or ignoring cycles of violence and harm.<\/p>\n

My research<\/a> on Confederate iconography and other work in critical memory studies<\/a> suggests that interventions focused on alternative commemorations \u2013 such as candlelight vigils, public performances, and truth and reconciliation commissions \u2013 can help repair a society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a commitment to the younger generation,\u201d said UNEGRO leader and historian Claudia Monteiro on the day Santa B\u00e1rbara d\u2019Oeste banned Confederate symbols<\/a>. \u201cThis symbol miseducates them.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Jordan Brasher<\/a>, Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography, Macalester College<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were no antebellum hoop skirts at the site of Brazil\u2019s annual \u201cFesta Confederada,\u201d or Confederate Festival, in 2024. Flag poles that once flew the Brazilian flag alongside the red, white and blue rebel banner of the American Confederacy stood barren. Since 1980, the Confederate Festival \u2013 a series of cultural performances and culinary experiences…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/638962\/original\/file-20241216-17-9po2rw.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9141,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139\/revisions\/9141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}