November 21, 2017 • 32 mins
At the close the US Civil War, tens of thousands of former Confederate families fled the US for a small city in Brazil, where they sought to continue living as they had in the days before the war. Tune in to learn more about the strange history of Americana, Brazil.
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hello, welcome to the show. I'm Ben. Oh, hey, I'm sorry,
it's me. It's no, it's no. I'm here. I'm here,
I'm paying attention, and we're gonna talk about some ridiculous history. Yes,
and I believe that was a beautiful snatch of song
there only it would be more like, Uh, I wish
(00:45):
I was in Brazil. Hooray, hooray in Brazil. L and
gonna make my stand to live and die in Brazil. Yes,
that's true. And you may be wondering, Ben Nol, super
producer Casey Pegram, what do these things have in common?
What does that? Uh? What does that series of hypnotic
(01:07):
sensual music? Thank you? Yeah, look at look at me.
I'm just a cloud of cotton candy and you're just
the milk of human kindness. We are delving into something
that uh that that we were hipped to via our
friends Mangesh and will Over at Part Time Genius, one
(01:30):
of our Pure podcast. They had an episode recently called
What's the most American place in the world parentheses outside
of the United States. Yeah, And one of the things
that came up time and time again were the various
Disneyland theme park attractions all across the globe. In fact,
in a twenty sixteen study by Branding Magazine, around five
(01:53):
thousand people Americans were asked of which two hundred forty
brands best personified the patriotism of the United States and
associated the Disney brand with US patriotism. But that is
not what our show is about today, because for truly
bizarro unusual taste of Americana outside of the US soil,
(02:14):
we're going to head for the do do Do Do
Do Do Do Do do do do umbras, Yes, my friends,
specifically to the Brazilian state of South Polo. Uh. You see,
in South Polo there is a town, a not insignificant
town in terms of population, a city of about two
(02:37):
hundred and thirty thousand people called Americana. See we we
set it up earlier. This is true, and this city
um welcomed somewhere between. According to various accounts, ten thousand
and twenty thousand American Southerners after the Confederates lost the
(02:58):
Civil War in the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, when the American
Confederacy lost the bloody dispute known as the Civil War
here in the US. In May of eighteen sixty five
War between the States, the War between the States, brother
against Brother Blue v. Gray, all that stuff. A contingent
(03:19):
of these Southerners fled the United States entirely seeking to
rebuild their lives and carry on the cultures to which
they were accustomed. And we do want to warn, of course,
that this is not all rainbow glitter trumpets and angel farts,
as we will see angel farts. Yeah, you know, I'm
(03:40):
just including things that people probably like. You know, I
went to a store with my kid over the weekend
and she but she's really in the slime, and she
bought the slime called unicorn farts. We're done talking about
farts now. Now we're going to talk about the settlers
and where they came from, which was mainly Alabama, Georgia,
and Texas. And they, as Ben said, one to preserve
(04:01):
their unreconstructed Southern way of life and also escape possible
prosecution for treason, no big deal war crimes uh in
this movement. This group movement occurs due primarily to a
fellow named William Hutchison Norris. He is the founder of
(04:22):
this town American of Brazil UH and he was a
Mexican American War veteran and also an Alabama senator. He
is the one who led the charge along with thirty
Confederate families believe he was a colonel, right, Yeah, I
believe so, and he was. He was also just a
side note here for anyone interested in some fringe history. Uh,
(04:45):
he was a grand Master of the Alabama Masonic Lodge,
which is not important to this story, but one of
those Oh not to be confused with a grand wizard. No, no,
no Alabama. Good luck planning, right, and not that we
aren flating, No, no, never, We would never, and I
mean that we would never. We actually we co host
(05:05):
a conspiracy realist podcast called Stuff They Don't Want You
to Know where if you want to hear more about
Illuminati and the like and Masonic rights, check out that show.
But yeah, so, Colonel Norris actually established this colony in
a town currently known as Santa Barbara d est Uh
and it was actually sometimes referred to as the Norris Colony.
(05:28):
And the reason that these uh Confederatos as they were
ultimately referred to as, decided to make that trip was
because Brazil offered cheap land and slavery was still legal.
That's yeah, that's one of the key things here. So
a lot of the people moving were agricultural experts, right.
(05:53):
Brazil offered cheap land and of incentives essentially, yeah, and
an agricult cultural system with which these families were unfortunately
very familiar, which was of course the use of slave labor.
And at the time Brazil had an emperor, a fellow
named dom Pedro two, and he didn't just you know,
(06:15):
turn a blind eye as these families moved in. He
wanted them there so much so that he offered to
pay moving costs, which you know, I like the way
Nol says it. Uh, the idea is essentially like tax incentives.
I think the cheap land came as an incentive. It
was to entice these new settlers. And also Don Pedro
the second was an ally I guess you could say
(06:38):
of the Confederate cause. So he saw this as an
opportunity to get new types of agricultural expertise I guess
in his country. One of those crops was cotton, which
as we know, is very important staple crop in the
American South, and Brazilian farmers started to take up these
(07:00):
new farming methods that they were taught more or less
by the American settlers, the Confederatos, right, And this all
begins to happen very quickly after the close of the
Civil War. By eighteen sixty six, the region was becoming
noticeably populated with these immigrants from the United States. And
(07:23):
we should add that not all of them found success.
There were thousands of people who accepted this deal, but
only one group of settlers from Alabama, Norris is you know, Cadre,
for lack of a better word, thrived and these uh,
these folks had surnames that you can find in the
town today like baired We got Buford, Clark, and Curry,
(07:48):
among others. There's actually a memorial there to this day
that highlights of these names like Sanders, Seawright, Skurlock, Smith, Steegel, Strong, Tanner.
And again this all falls under the serenity of the
suzeranity of Norris. So one thing that's fascinating is that
(08:10):
the descendants of these settlers spoke English with a Southern
accent for generations and over time, as people do, they
intermarried with Brazilians who have been living there since way before,
and their numbers sword they thrived, they became. You would argue,
(08:30):
would one would argue, well, actually everybody agrees. They became
essentially Brazilian, right, and not just some American exclave. But
like many people in the world, even in the modern day,
the population of Americana, those two d thirty something thousand
people love Western music, love Western movies, and of the
(08:53):
music they love, they're especially fond of wait for it,
country music. Are you a fan of country music, man
country and or western? You know? I am a fan
of very old country, you know, my my family. Without
getting too deep into the murky past of the Bowling clan,
(09:16):
they have a extensive roots in Appalachia. So bluegrass, gospel, hey,
countryment not so, I'm not so much a modern country fan.
I don't know what about you. I find most modern
country music to be pretty un listened a little, but
I'm with you on the classics. Um so, let let's
(09:37):
let's backtrack just to touch sure, let's uh, let's can
we get a can we get a backtrack? Thevegle noise? Okay,
here we are only because I think this is interesting
and worth mentioning, because I feel like we glossed over
to the tad Don page or the second The ruler
of Brazil during this time. He ruled from eighteen o
nine to eighteen sixty five. UM. He was a huge
(09:58):
admirer of Abraham Lincoln. Actually, so we mentioned the whole
fact that, you know, slavery was still legal in Brazil,
and that may have made it attractive to some of
these settlers. They wanted to continue their way of life
they were used to. But Don Pedro the second actually
felt like the idea of slavery had the potential to
(10:19):
cause a civil war in and in his own country,
which retrospect seems painfully, painfully, painfully obvious. So he was
all about getting rid of slavery, and when he kind
of helped pushed through some measures that did that, he
was basically deposed. But the work that he did to
abolish slavery, you know, persevered, and he actually started with
(10:42):
the uh, hopefully not bucher These too bad, but the
Quiros Law of eighteen fifty, which outlawed the slave trade.
And then his second one was to proclaim in eighteen
seventy one the Lido venture livro, which is the Law
of the Free Womb, which declared that children born of
slaves would also be free m is you know, and
then Finally there was the lie area, the Golden Law,
(11:05):
which abolished slavery completely in and that actually caused some
of the folks that immigrated to Brazil to leave. Also
during this time when kind of the whole reconstruction situation
changed and it became much more of the Jim Crow
you know, post abolition world that we know, uh and
(11:27):
this spy. Yes. So there there are several really important
things to underlying here. The Golden Law, if we just
use the English term for it, is the ultimate no
caveats manumission law, freeing one from slavery. The other laws
were sort of gradually weakening the type of slavery that
(11:50):
existed by degrees and all. Slavery is the plorable, repugnant
and in my view, in human, but there are several
different types. And the type of slavery that was practiced
in the United States leading to the Civil War, and
then type of slavery that was practiced in Brazil at
(12:10):
the time intended to be something like chattel slavery. Definitely
chattel slavery in the US and in Brazil a very
similar system. This means that it's not say indentured servitude.
It wouldn't be um. It wouldn't be for instance, someone
being a slave for seven years until a debt is
(12:31):
considered repaid. It's slavery based on bloodline, which means that
automatically the child of a slave becomes a slave for life,
no escape, and any kids that they have are going
to be the property of whomever is considered legally to
be the owner of that slave. The reason I brought
up the whole situation with slavery in Brazil was because
(12:55):
actually some of the newly freed slaves in the US
immigrated to Brazil as well, and sometimes they even came
with their previous owners. And I found this on an
article on Project Gutenberg's self publishing press on the Confederados,
and it says in this article that there was a
situation where a former slave by the name of Steve
(13:16):
Watson was given the run of a sawmill in Brazil
that belonged to his former owner, a man by the
name of Judge Dyer of Texas, and when Mr Watson
came back to the US, um Dyer actually deeded all
of his remaining property to Watson. In the area of
the Jukia Valley um where there are many Brazilian families
(13:38):
with the last name Vaseo, which the Portuguese way of
pronouncing Watson, So this legacy perseveres to this day in
a pretty interesting way. Many families did end up traveling
back to the United States during the reconstruction era. The
(14:00):
settlers who stayed became quickly successful. They get a reputation
for honesty and hard work. The new techniques they brought
for existing agricultural products worked well, but they also brought
new food crops and new ways of cooking food or
preparing it. And as we know, you can learn so
(14:21):
much about the human story through the transmission of food,
whether we're talking spices like peppercorn or saffron, whether we're
talking staples like rice, or how tomatoes made it to Italy,
which is its own other story. I guess before I
derail as too much, let be let me stay focused
on Brazil. I think it's because I just I didn't
(14:42):
eat before we came in here. So now food history
is automatically, uh, automatically capturing my mind to just pound
the rest of that five hour energy. Dude, just do it,
do it? Do it? Uh. Some some of the dishes
that were standouts that we're very popular in this area Brazil,
where things like chess pie or vinegar pie, fried chicken
(15:06):
vinegar pie. Vinegar pie doesn't have the most appealing name.
I would grant you that. Uh it's it's like eggs
with a little bit of cinnamon, sugar and two tablespoons
of cider vinegar. He makes something like you feed two
kids when they've misbehaved or no. It's the thing people
(15:27):
people eat it for fun and it has sort of
an apple pie like flavor because of the cider, but
there's a custardy vibe to it as well. You know,
I haven't tried it. I'd love to hear from someone
who has. Maybe you know what, Friends and neighbors, thank
you so much for listening to show. I'd like to
defer to you on this. If you have tried vinegar pie,
(15:48):
let us know if this is something that we should
delve into, if we should try it ourselves, or you know,
warn us if it's a traumatic experience for you. The
Southern food, right, the Southern food is is pretty pretty
successful and it catches on and as we said, these
(16:09):
Confederados as they were called, I guess, continue their culture
and as best they could right, and similar to the
hippos that traveled to Columbia with Pablo Escobar, they thrived
in a way that might seem, you know, counterintuitive at first,
(16:30):
to the point that this is not just an odd
historical footnote, it's a ridiculous historical footnote, right, yes, And
it's a current practice because if you travel down to
Americana Brazil today, you will not just see one monuments
(16:50):
and maybe a couple of placards and old farms roll plantations. No,
depending on when you go, you might find yourself in
the midst of a very strange, very strange party, something
of a shin dig, something of a suare. You see
every year for the last quarter century, the descendants of
(17:13):
these Confederados gather for a gigantic party that celebrates their
vision of Confederate culture, which, you know what is sort
of reminds me of did you ever go to Six
Flags over Georgia? Yeah? I have season passes. You know
that about me? Ben, No, I'm setting you up the
(17:35):
I don't know if it's still the same because it's
talking about Lick Skillet Junction right right where they've got
Dixie music playing the whole time. I almost picture it
like that. So the population of the town gets together.
They dress up in gray like Johnny reb uniforms and
then hoop skirts and they dance around to fiddle and
(17:58):
banjo tunes and then the copious amounts of Confederate flag wavings,
shall we say wavings. They even have a dance floor
emblazoned with the what do they call it, old old
old glory, that's it. Yeah, And they're not alone. Over
the years, reporters have traveled to check out the celebration,
(18:19):
and uh so have Confederate enthusiasts from the United States,
nan actors descendants themselves from Confederate soldiers and the like.
In fact, the first of all the party, the annual
festival is called the Festa Confederata and um, you know
(18:39):
I said, it's marked by Confederate flags, Confederate uniforms, the
hoop skirts you mentioned, um, and this fusion of you know,
Southern culture with Brazilian culture, dancing, um, popular music that
you know, like you're saying, banjo music and all the
stuff that you would have heard during the Antebellum period.
And they have this affection, this affinity, if you will,
(19:00):
for the Confederate flag and then as you know, listeners,
as you know, this is something of a problematic emblem
today more than ever, I would say, in our country. Yes,
here in the United States as we record this in
twenty seventeen. Uh, the nation is engaging in a debate
(19:21):
about symbols and their historical significance. And one of the
big flashpoints for this in our country is always going
to be, or has always been, up to now, the
Confederate flag. Since the end of the Civil War to
the modern day. People have argued back and forth about
(19:42):
what waving this flag means, right, And the same thing
goes for statues monuments. You know. We are based in Atlanta,
where we are just a few minutes drive away from
a gigantic Confederate monument. It known as Stone Mountain. Yeah,
(20:02):
it's literally a mountain with a big old Confederate scene
shell we say, um carved into the rock. Um. Who
are those dudes? Yeah, there are three Confederate figures depicted
in just gigantic scale on on Stone Mountain there, Jefferson Davis,
(20:22):
Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. It's interesting because with
all the talk these days in the news about you know,
removing Confederate monuments from um cities, the courthouse offensive, they're offensive,
they shouldn't be on public land, etcetera. Uh, it came out.
It's really interesting that Roberty Lee it was kind of
against Confederate monuments in the first place, and then they
(20:44):
didn't really pop up until years, you know, after the
Civil War. It's a really great quote from Roberty Lee
where he says, quote, I think it wiser not to
keep open the source of war with to follow the
example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks
of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings
it engendered. And so back to Brazil. Is actually a
(21:07):
really fantastic article in the New York Times about this town.
This Santa Barbara de Asto, Yeah, yeah, by Simon Romero.
Right's right in the very first sentence um in the article.
I'm gonna quote because this is great. The set scene
Santa Barbara Deasto, Brazil, on a stage festooned with Confederate flags.
The singer was belting out dixieland Delight by Alabama near
(21:30):
an obelisk, honoring the Americans who fled to this outpost
in the aftermath of the Civil War. Here's the important quote.
We're not racists, says Cissero car fifty four, an engineer
whose great great grandfather hailed from Texas. Wearing a fedora
featuring the rebel battle flag. He explained in Portuguese, we're
just revering our ancestors who had the good sense to
(21:51):
settle in Brazil. This is actually a really really interesting touchpoint,
like considering what's going on in our country right now
and the ar uments for and against removing these relics
of the past, and whether it actually means you're actively
being racist or you're actively um celebrating celebrating slavery in
(22:12):
some way, or you know, um. And I think this
is a very interesting case study where this is almost
like a weird back to the Disneyland thing. This is
almost like this kind of removed version of this, you know,
where it's not functional exactly. It's like a I don't know,
I I think I see what you're saying. Because, as
as we'll find out at the end, this is not
(22:35):
the only situation where something like this has occurred foreign
country or in a non US country, or let's even
go further and say a country not directly associated with
the conflict UH that is, you know, being celebrated, and
it's very important for us to underline these these following things.
(22:56):
The average person celebrating this sees it as a celebration
of their own history, the history of Americana Brazil. They
do not see it as a, as we said, a
celebration of slavery, or in any way a celebration of
man's in humanity to man or people's in humanity two people. Rather.
(23:21):
In fact, the Confederados have downplayed their ancestors interest in
maintaining UH slavery system. But you know, this doesn't just
include the context of the US. We must also include
the context of Brazil, which was the last country in
either American continent to abolish slavery. It wasn't until eighteen
(23:42):
eighty eight. And then after that, slave like conditions and
situations continued. There were still going to be you know,
agricultural wage slavery, despite the best efforts of our boy
Dumpage or the second despite his best efforts. And this
means that despite the intervening decades, including nineteen forty where
(24:08):
there was a constitutional amendment prohibiting employers from submitting workers
to quote conditions analogous to slavery. Um Brazil was still
desperate to modernize, and this incentivize farm owners to start
putting wage laborers in debt and then holding them in bondage,
(24:28):
preventing their freedom of movement off the plantation. So more
that indentured servitude exactly exactly, and Americana itself got caught
up in this controversy in two thousand thirteen, in January,
the Brazilian Ministry of Labor orchestrated a sting in Americana
and it found Bolivian immigrants manufacturing baby clothes under the
(24:53):
supervision of two Bolivian bosses. Uh they broke up the factory,
the Ministry of Labor, that is, and they sued. They
said the conditions they found were deplorable or execrable enough
to constitute slavery. But of every single person or the
average person, again that you ask about slavery in this town,
(25:15):
most people will say, well, I don't there's no slavery here,
and this is not in any way a celebration of that.
So what seems to be a flashpoint of conflict here
in the United States is simply a the same thing
as like the annual town Fair. I think that's what
I was kind of poorly stumbling my way toward earlier.
(25:37):
Is that it feels like that Six Flags or Disneyland
kind of recreation of a of a situation where the
roots of negativity are somehow kind of whitewashed away a
little bit. It doesn't mean I don't it's still kind
of picked me out a little bit, to be honest,
you know what I mean. But it's interesting. And in fact,
(25:59):
in nine teen seventy two, Jimmy Carter came to the
region for a visit to Americana, and in you know,
in preparing for his visit, the Americana actually added the
Confederate flag into its municipal coat of arms. UM. But
actually most people that live there these days are Italian descended,
(26:20):
so they removed it because the descendants of the Confederatos
apparently now comprised only about a tenth of the population
of the area. UM. But when Carter was there, he
visited the Santa Barbara de Este and visited the grave
of um a relative of his wife Rosalind her relatives
(26:40):
was one of the original Confederatos, and while he was
there he couldn't help but notice that everyone just seemed
just like good old Southerners because we know Jimmy Carter
being from Atlanta as we are. Um, he is the
portrait of a Southern gentleman. Yes, yes, he knows it
when he sees. So if you're listening to this, Jimmy,
(27:01):
feel free to give us a call. Well, answer the phone.
It's actually really nice, guys, several where coworkers of metam.
He does all this habitat for humanity stuff, and he's
got the Carter Center does all this amazing work election monitoring,
yet disease uh, disease mitigation. Yeah, so Nolan, I want
to be clear that we're not denigrating the people in
(27:24):
Americana who celebrate this way. We're hopefully painting some of
the context here. Because the idea of and exclave, you know,
the idea of people moving to a foreign country and
attempting to make it function as if it is just
(27:45):
the same thing as the country from which they originated.
It's it's a fairly i don't want to say common,
but it's not as rare as it might sound, you know,
and there have been multiple attempts in South America, even
in Brazil by West nurse to sort of recreate the
concept of the small town USA or the Confederacy or
(28:08):
whatever their cultural slice of the vinegar pie that his
American history might be. Still I feel about that. Can
we call it something else? Uh? Do you want to
call it delicious? Yum yum pie, apple cider pie. I'm
fine with that. That's a little better with that, Hey, listeners,
what do you think it should be called? What should have?
Disgusting food stuff? How can you make it more palatable
(28:29):
just by changing the name? And is it disgusting? Is
it just the name? I'm being I'm being judging because
there's like barley water probably awesome. Have you ever heard
of barley water beer? No? No, in in the UK?
I swear it's squash. And then of course Spotted Dick
remember that maybe King Ralph with John? Yeah, that was
great that there's a big joke in that. You're welcome,
(28:59):
girl talk. We just gave them an idea for the
next album. I do want to close with just let's
let's call it a teaser if we can. For another
strange relationship between American governments or the US government and
a South American area. It turns out that in Paraguay
(29:24):
President Rutherford B. Hayes is immensely popular. Do you ever
hear about this? Yeah? He uh, he's immensely popular because
he awarded territory to Paraguay as an arbiter in a
boundary dispute between Paraguay and Argentina after the Paraguay and War.
And we were not gonna we're not gonna just segue
(29:46):
into that as a whole another episode. But if you're
interested in these sorts of stories, this is a great read.
So find out why Rutherford B. Hayes, who is not
a name you here often in the US anymore, Oh,
Ruthie b Yeah right right. Actually people had at the
time his opponents called him Ruther Fraud. I know, it's dirty,
(30:07):
dirty pool, but find you can find out why he
remains immensely popular in parts of Paraguay today. And we
hope that you will let us know if you find
your way down to the Festa Confederata in Brazil. And
uh side note, if you're a George Straight fan, Oh buddy,
(30:28):
this is supposed to be right up your alley. I'm
proud to be in nuts. Who's that Leon Green Steve
Greenwood case he just told me, I'm just making up
names now Lee Greenwood, and you know what that means.
Whenever we mentioned Lee Greenwood, that's a new rule on
the podcast that Noel and I just made up. That
means that it's time to wrap up this episode of
(30:50):
a Ridiculous History. We hope that you enjoyed it and
we would as always love to hear from you. You
can find us in our whole team on Instagram. You
can find us on Facebook where we are Ridiculous History,
both of those, and feel free if you're already online
to drop us a suggestion. Let us know if there's
(31:10):
a particular episode in history that you would like us
to cover in an episode of our own. Are we
not being ridiculous enough? Are you know? Do you do?
Do you want to pick apart literally everything that we
say we're down? Just do it? Are you not entertained
by the ridiculousity that's both the speed of ridiculousness and
the direction to learn something new every day. Well, we
(31:32):
hope you guys learned something and then had a good time,
and hope you'll join us on the next installment Ridiculous History.
(32:00):
The
Hello, welcome to the show. I'm Ben. Oh, hey, I'm sorry,
it's me. It's no, it's no. I'm here. I'm here,
I'm paying attention, and we're gonna talk about some ridiculous history. Yes,
and I believe that was a beautiful snatch of song
there only it would be more like, Uh, I wish
(00:45):
I was in Brazil. Hooray, hooray in Brazil. L and
gonna make my stand to live and die in Brazil. Yes,
that's true. And you may be wondering, Ben Nol, super
producer Casey Pegram, what do these things have in common?
What does that? Uh? What does that series of hypnotic
(01:07):
sensual music? Thank you? Yeah, look at look at me.
I'm just a cloud of cotton candy and you're just
the milk of human kindness. We are delving into something
that uh that that we were hipped to via our
friends Mangesh and will Over at Part Time Genius, one
(01:30):
of our Pure podcast. They had an episode recently called
What's the most American place in the world parentheses outside
of the United States. Yeah, And one of the things
that came up time and time again were the various
Disneyland theme park attractions all across the globe. In fact,
in a twenty sixteen study by Branding Magazine, around five
(01:53):
thousand people Americans were asked of which two hundred forty
brands best personified the patriotism of the United States and
associated the Disney brand with US patriotism. But that is
not what our show is about today, because for truly
bizarro unusual taste of Americana outside of the US soil,
(02:14):
we're going to head for the do do Do Do
Do Do Do Do do do do umbras, Yes, my friends,
specifically to the Brazilian state of South Polo. Uh. You see,
in South Polo there is a town, a not insignificant
town in terms of population, a city of about two
(02:37):
hundred and thirty thousand people called Americana. See we we
set it up earlier. This is true, and this city
um welcomed somewhere between. According to various accounts, ten thousand
and twenty thousand American Southerners after the Confederates lost the
(02:58):
Civil War in the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, when the American
Confederacy lost the bloody dispute known as the Civil War
here in the US. In May of eighteen sixty five
War between the States, the War between the States, brother
against Brother Blue v. Gray, all that stuff. A contingent
(03:19):
of these Southerners fled the United States entirely seeking to
rebuild their lives and carry on the cultures to which
they were accustomed. And we do want to warn, of course,
that this is not all rainbow glitter trumpets and angel farts,
as we will see angel farts. Yeah, you know, I'm
(03:40):
just including things that people probably like. You know, I
went to a store with my kid over the weekend
and she but she's really in the slime, and she
bought the slime called unicorn farts. We're done talking about
farts now. Now we're going to talk about the settlers
and where they came from, which was mainly Alabama, Georgia,
and Texas. And they, as Ben said, one to preserve
(04:01):
their unreconstructed Southern way of life and also escape possible
prosecution for treason, no big deal war crimes uh in
this movement. This group movement occurs due primarily to a
fellow named William Hutchison Norris. He is the founder of
(04:22):
this town American of Brazil UH and he was a
Mexican American War veteran and also an Alabama senator. He
is the one who led the charge along with thirty
Confederate families believe he was a colonel, right, Yeah, I
believe so, and he was. He was also just a
side note here for anyone interested in some fringe history. Uh,
(04:45):
he was a grand Master of the Alabama Masonic Lodge,
which is not important to this story, but one of
those Oh not to be confused with a grand wizard. No, no,
no Alabama. Good luck planning, right, and not that we
aren flating, No, no, never, We would never, and I
mean that we would never. We actually we co host
(05:05):
a conspiracy realist podcast called Stuff They Don't Want You
to Know where if you want to hear more about
Illuminati and the like and Masonic rights, check out that show.
But yeah, so, Colonel Norris actually established this colony in
a town currently known as Santa Barbara d est Uh
and it was actually sometimes referred to as the Norris Colony.
(05:28):
And the reason that these uh Confederatos as they were
ultimately referred to as, decided to make that trip was
because Brazil offered cheap land and slavery was still legal.
That's yeah, that's one of the key things here. So
a lot of the people moving were agricultural experts, right.
(05:53):
Brazil offered cheap land and of incentives essentially, yeah, and
an agricult cultural system with which these families were unfortunately
very familiar, which was of course the use of slave labor.
And at the time Brazil had an emperor, a fellow
named dom Pedro two, and he didn't just you know,
(06:15):
turn a blind eye as these families moved in. He
wanted them there so much so that he offered to
pay moving costs, which you know, I like the way
Nol says it. Uh, the idea is essentially like tax incentives.
I think the cheap land came as an incentive. It
was to entice these new settlers. And also Don Pedro
the second was an ally I guess you could say
(06:38):
of the Confederate cause. So he saw this as an
opportunity to get new types of agricultural expertise I guess
in his country. One of those crops was cotton, which
as we know, is very important staple crop in the
American South, and Brazilian farmers started to take up these
(07:00):
new farming methods that they were taught more or less
by the American settlers, the Confederatos, right, And this all
begins to happen very quickly after the close of the
Civil War. By eighteen sixty six, the region was becoming
noticeably populated with these immigrants from the United States. And
(07:23):
we should add that not all of them found success.
There were thousands of people who accepted this deal, but
only one group of settlers from Alabama, Norris is you know, Cadre,
for lack of a better word, thrived and these uh,
these folks had surnames that you can find in the
town today like baired We got Buford, Clark, and Curry,
(07:48):
among others. There's actually a memorial there to this day
that highlights of these names like Sanders, Seawright, Skurlock, Smith, Steegel, Strong, Tanner.
And again this all falls under the serenity of the
suzeranity of Norris. So one thing that's fascinating is that
(08:10):
the descendants of these settlers spoke English with a Southern
accent for generations and over time, as people do, they
intermarried with Brazilians who have been living there since way before,
and their numbers sword they thrived, they became. You would argue,
(08:30):
would one would argue, well, actually everybody agrees. They became
essentially Brazilian, right, and not just some American exclave. But
like many people in the world, even in the modern day,
the population of Americana, those two d thirty something thousand
people love Western music, love Western movies, and of the
(08:53):
music they love, they're especially fond of wait for it,
country music. Are you a fan of country music, man
country and or western? You know? I am a fan
of very old country, you know, my my family. Without
getting too deep into the murky past of the Bowling clan,
(09:16):
they have a extensive roots in Appalachia. So bluegrass, gospel, hey,
countryment not so, I'm not so much a modern country fan.
I don't know what about you. I find most modern
country music to be pretty un listened a little, but
I'm with you on the classics. Um so, let let's
(09:37):
let's backtrack just to touch sure, let's uh, let's can
we get a can we get a backtrack? Thevegle noise? Okay,
here we are only because I think this is interesting
and worth mentioning, because I feel like we glossed over
to the tad Don page or the second The ruler
of Brazil during this time. He ruled from eighteen o
nine to eighteen sixty five. UM. He was a huge
(09:58):
admirer of Abraham Lincoln. Actually, so we mentioned the whole
fact that, you know, slavery was still legal in Brazil,
and that may have made it attractive to some of
these settlers. They wanted to continue their way of life
they were used to. But Don Pedro the second actually
felt like the idea of slavery had the potential to
(10:19):
cause a civil war in and in his own country,
which retrospect seems painfully, painfully, painfully obvious. So he was
all about getting rid of slavery, and when he kind
of helped pushed through some measures that did that, he
was basically deposed. But the work that he did to
abolish slavery, you know, persevered, and he actually started with
(10:42):
the uh, hopefully not bucher These too bad, but the
Quiros Law of eighteen fifty, which outlawed the slave trade.
And then his second one was to proclaim in eighteen
seventy one the Lido venture livro, which is the Law
of the Free Womb, which declared that children born of
slaves would also be free m is you know, and
then Finally there was the lie area, the Golden Law,
(11:05):
which abolished slavery completely in and that actually caused some
of the folks that immigrated to Brazil to leave. Also
during this time when kind of the whole reconstruction situation
changed and it became much more of the Jim Crow
you know, post abolition world that we know, uh and
(11:27):
this spy. Yes. So there there are several really important
things to underlying here. The Golden Law, if we just
use the English term for it, is the ultimate no
caveats manumission law, freeing one from slavery. The other laws
were sort of gradually weakening the type of slavery that
(11:50):
existed by degrees and all. Slavery is the plorable, repugnant
and in my view, in human, but there are several
different types. And the type of slavery that was practiced
in the United States leading to the Civil War, and
then type of slavery that was practiced in Brazil at
(12:10):
the time intended to be something like chattel slavery. Definitely
chattel slavery in the US and in Brazil a very
similar system. This means that it's not say indentured servitude.
It wouldn't be um. It wouldn't be for instance, someone
being a slave for seven years until a debt is
(12:31):
considered repaid. It's slavery based on bloodline, which means that
automatically the child of a slave becomes a slave for life,
no escape, and any kids that they have are going
to be the property of whomever is considered legally to
be the owner of that slave. The reason I brought
up the whole situation with slavery in Brazil was because
(12:55):
actually some of the newly freed slaves in the US
immigrated to Brazil as well, and sometimes they even came
with their previous owners. And I found this on an
article on Project Gutenberg's self publishing press on the Confederados,
and it says in this article that there was a
situation where a former slave by the name of Steve
(13:16):
Watson was given the run of a sawmill in Brazil
that belonged to his former owner, a man by the
name of Judge Dyer of Texas, and when Mr Watson
came back to the US, um Dyer actually deeded all
of his remaining property to Watson. In the area of
the Jukia Valley um where there are many Brazilian families
(13:38):
with the last name Vaseo, which the Portuguese way of
pronouncing Watson, So this legacy perseveres to this day in
a pretty interesting way. Many families did end up traveling
back to the United States during the reconstruction era. The
(14:00):
settlers who stayed became quickly successful. They get a reputation
for honesty and hard work. The new techniques they brought
for existing agricultural products worked well, but they also brought
new food crops and new ways of cooking food or
preparing it. And as we know, you can learn so
(14:21):
much about the human story through the transmission of food,
whether we're talking spices like peppercorn or saffron, whether we're
talking staples like rice, or how tomatoes made it to Italy,
which is its own other story. I guess before I
derail as too much, let be let me stay focused
on Brazil. I think it's because I just I didn't
(14:42):
eat before we came in here. So now food history
is automatically, uh, automatically capturing my mind to just pound
the rest of that five hour energy. Dude, just do it,
do it? Do it? Uh. Some some of the dishes
that were standouts that we're very popular in this area Brazil,
where things like chess pie or vinegar pie, fried chicken
(15:06):
vinegar pie. Vinegar pie doesn't have the most appealing name.
I would grant you that. Uh it's it's like eggs
with a little bit of cinnamon, sugar and two tablespoons
of cider vinegar. He makes something like you feed two
kids when they've misbehaved or no. It's the thing people
(15:27):
people eat it for fun and it has sort of
an apple pie like flavor because of the cider, but
there's a custardy vibe to it as well. You know,
I haven't tried it. I'd love to hear from someone
who has. Maybe you know what, Friends and neighbors, thank
you so much for listening to show. I'd like to
defer to you on this. If you have tried vinegar pie,
(15:48):
let us know if this is something that we should
delve into, if we should try it ourselves, or you know,
warn us if it's a traumatic experience for you. The
Southern food, right, the Southern food is is pretty pretty
successful and it catches on and as we said, these
(16:09):
Confederados as they were called, I guess, continue their culture
and as best they could right, and similar to the
hippos that traveled to Columbia with Pablo Escobar, they thrived
in a way that might seem, you know, counterintuitive at first,
(16:30):
to the point that this is not just an odd
historical footnote, it's a ridiculous historical footnote, right, yes, And
it's a current practice because if you travel down to
Americana Brazil today, you will not just see one monuments
(16:50):
and maybe a couple of placards and old farms roll plantations. No,
depending on when you go, you might find yourself in
the midst of a very strange, very strange party, something
of a shin dig, something of a suare. You see
every year for the last quarter century, the descendants of
(17:13):
these Confederados gather for a gigantic party that celebrates their
vision of Confederate culture, which, you know what is sort
of reminds me of did you ever go to Six
Flags over Georgia? Yeah? I have season passes. You know
that about me? Ben, No, I'm setting you up the
(17:35):
I don't know if it's still the same because it's
talking about Lick Skillet Junction right right where they've got
Dixie music playing the whole time. I almost picture it
like that. So the population of the town gets together.
They dress up in gray like Johnny reb uniforms and
then hoop skirts and they dance around to fiddle and
(17:58):
banjo tunes and then the copious amounts of Confederate flag wavings,
shall we say wavings. They even have a dance floor
emblazoned with the what do they call it, old old
old glory, that's it. Yeah, And they're not alone. Over
the years, reporters have traveled to check out the celebration,
(18:19):
and uh so have Confederate enthusiasts from the United States,
nan actors descendants themselves from Confederate soldiers and the like.
In fact, the first of all the party, the annual
festival is called the Festa Confederata and um, you know
(18:39):
I said, it's marked by Confederate flags, Confederate uniforms, the
hoop skirts you mentioned, um, and this fusion of you know,
Southern culture with Brazilian culture, dancing, um, popular music that
you know, like you're saying, banjo music and all the
stuff that you would have heard during the Antebellum period.
And they have this affection, this affinity, if you will,
(19:00):
for the Confederate flag and then as you know, listeners,
as you know, this is something of a problematic emblem
today more than ever, I would say, in our country. Yes,
here in the United States as we record this in
twenty seventeen. Uh, the nation is engaging in a debate
(19:21):
about symbols and their historical significance. And one of the
big flashpoints for this in our country is always going
to be, or has always been, up to now, the
Confederate flag. Since the end of the Civil War to
the modern day. People have argued back and forth about
(19:42):
what waving this flag means, right, And the same thing
goes for statues monuments. You know. We are based in Atlanta,
where we are just a few minutes drive away from
a gigantic Confederate monument. It known as Stone Mountain. Yeah,
(20:02):
it's literally a mountain with a big old Confederate scene
shell we say, um carved into the rock. Um. Who
are those dudes? Yeah, there are three Confederate figures depicted
in just gigantic scale on on Stone Mountain there, Jefferson Davis,
(20:22):
Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. It's interesting because with
all the talk these days in the news about you know,
removing Confederate monuments from um cities, the courthouse offensive, they're offensive,
they shouldn't be on public land, etcetera. Uh, it came out.
It's really interesting that Roberty Lee it was kind of
against Confederate monuments in the first place, and then they
(20:44):
didn't really pop up until years, you know, after the
Civil War. It's a really great quote from Roberty Lee
where he says, quote, I think it wiser not to
keep open the source of war with to follow the
example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks
of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings
it engendered. And so back to Brazil. Is actually a
(21:07):
really fantastic article in the New York Times about this town.
This Santa Barbara de Asto, Yeah, yeah, by Simon Romero.
Right's right in the very first sentence um in the article.
I'm gonna quote because this is great. The set scene
Santa Barbara Deasto, Brazil, on a stage festooned with Confederate flags.
The singer was belting out dixieland Delight by Alabama near
(21:30):
an obelisk, honoring the Americans who fled to this outpost
in the aftermath of the Civil War. Here's the important quote.
We're not racists, says Cissero car fifty four, an engineer
whose great great grandfather hailed from Texas. Wearing a fedora
featuring the rebel battle flag. He explained in Portuguese, we're
just revering our ancestors who had the good sense to
(21:51):
settle in Brazil. This is actually a really really interesting touchpoint,
like considering what's going on in our country right now
and the ar uments for and against removing these relics
of the past, and whether it actually means you're actively
being racist or you're actively um celebrating celebrating slavery in
(22:12):
some way, or you know, um. And I think this
is a very interesting case study where this is almost
like a weird back to the Disneyland thing. This is
almost like this kind of removed version of this, you know,
where it's not functional exactly. It's like a I don't know,
I I think I see what you're saying. Because, as
as we'll find out at the end, this is not
(22:35):
the only situation where something like this has occurred foreign
country or in a non US country, or let's even
go further and say a country not directly associated with
the conflict UH that is, you know, being celebrated, and
it's very important for us to underline these these following things.
(22:56):
The average person celebrating this sees it as a celebration
of their own history, the history of Americana Brazil. They
do not see it as a, as we said, a
celebration of slavery, or in any way a celebration of
man's in humanity to man or people's in humanity two people. Rather.
(23:21):
In fact, the Confederados have downplayed their ancestors interest in
maintaining UH slavery system. But you know, this doesn't just
include the context of the US. We must also include
the context of Brazil, which was the last country in
either American continent to abolish slavery. It wasn't until eighteen
(23:42):
eighty eight. And then after that, slave like conditions and
situations continued. There were still going to be you know,
agricultural wage slavery, despite the best efforts of our boy
Dumpage or the second despite his best efforts. And this
means that despite the intervening decades, including nineteen forty where
(24:08):
there was a constitutional amendment prohibiting employers from submitting workers
to quote conditions analogous to slavery. Um Brazil was still
desperate to modernize, and this incentivize farm owners to start
putting wage laborers in debt and then holding them in bondage,
(24:28):
preventing their freedom of movement off the plantation. So more
that indentured servitude exactly exactly, and Americana itself got caught
up in this controversy in two thousand thirteen, in January,
the Brazilian Ministry of Labor orchestrated a sting in Americana
and it found Bolivian immigrants manufacturing baby clothes under the
(24:53):
supervision of two Bolivian bosses. Uh they broke up the factory,
the Ministry of Labor, that is, and they sued. They
said the conditions they found were deplorable or execrable enough
to constitute slavery. But of every single person or the
average person, again that you ask about slavery in this town,
(25:15):
most people will say, well, I don't there's no slavery here,
and this is not in any way a celebration of that.
So what seems to be a flashpoint of conflict here
in the United States is simply a the same thing
as like the annual town Fair. I think that's what
I was kind of poorly stumbling my way toward earlier.
(25:37):
Is that it feels like that Six Flags or Disneyland
kind of recreation of a of a situation where the
roots of negativity are somehow kind of whitewashed away a
little bit. It doesn't mean I don't it's still kind
of picked me out a little bit, to be honest,
you know what I mean. But it's interesting. And in fact,
(25:59):
in nine teen seventy two, Jimmy Carter came to the
region for a visit to Americana, and in you know,
in preparing for his visit, the Americana actually added the
Confederate flag into its municipal coat of arms. UM. But
actually most people that live there these days are Italian descended,
(26:20):
so they removed it because the descendants of the Confederatos
apparently now comprised only about a tenth of the population
of the area. UM. But when Carter was there, he
visited the Santa Barbara de Este and visited the grave
of um a relative of his wife Rosalind her relatives
(26:40):
was one of the original Confederatos, and while he was
there he couldn't help but notice that everyone just seemed
just like good old Southerners because we know Jimmy Carter
being from Atlanta as we are. Um, he is the
portrait of a Southern gentleman. Yes, yes, he knows it
when he sees. So if you're listening to this, Jimmy,
(27:01):
feel free to give us a call. Well, answer the phone.
It's actually really nice, guys, several where coworkers of metam.
He does all this habitat for humanity stuff, and he's
got the Carter Center does all this amazing work election monitoring,
yet disease uh, disease mitigation. Yeah, so Nolan, I want
to be clear that we're not denigrating the people in
(27:24):
Americana who celebrate this way. We're hopefully painting some of
the context here. Because the idea of and exclave, you know,
the idea of people moving to a foreign country and
attempting to make it function as if it is just
(27:45):
the same thing as the country from which they originated.
It's it's a fairly i don't want to say common,
but it's not as rare as it might sound, you know,
and there have been multiple attempts in South America, even
in Brazil by West nurse to sort of recreate the
concept of the small town USA or the Confederacy or
(28:08):
whatever their cultural slice of the vinegar pie that his
American history might be. Still I feel about that. Can
we call it something else? Uh? Do you want to
call it delicious? Yum yum pie, apple cider pie. I'm
fine with that. That's a little better with that, Hey, listeners,
what do you think it should be called? What should have?
Disgusting food stuff? How can you make it more palatable
(28:29):
just by changing the name? And is it disgusting? Is
it just the name? I'm being I'm being judging because
there's like barley water probably awesome. Have you ever heard
of barley water beer? No? No, in in the UK?
I swear it's squash. And then of course Spotted Dick
remember that maybe King Ralph with John? Yeah, that was
great that there's a big joke in that. You're welcome,
(28:59):
girl talk. We just gave them an idea for the
next album. I do want to close with just let's
let's call it a teaser if we can. For another
strange relationship between American governments or the US government and
a South American area. It turns out that in Paraguay
(29:24):
President Rutherford B. Hayes is immensely popular. Do you ever
hear about this? Yeah? He uh, he's immensely popular because
he awarded territory to Paraguay as an arbiter in a
boundary dispute between Paraguay and Argentina after the Paraguay and War.
And we were not gonna we're not gonna just segue
(29:46):
into that as a whole another episode. But if you're
interested in these sorts of stories, this is a great read.
So find out why Rutherford B. Hayes, who is not
a name you here often in the US anymore, Oh,
Ruthie b Yeah right right. Actually people had at the
time his opponents called him Ruther Fraud. I know, it's dirty,
(30:07):
dirty pool, but find you can find out why he
remains immensely popular in parts of Paraguay today. And we
hope that you will let us know if you find
your way down to the Festa Confederata in Brazil. And
uh side note, if you're a George Straight fan, Oh buddy,
(30:28):
this is supposed to be right up your alley. I'm
proud to be in nuts. Who's that Leon Green Steve
Greenwood case he just told me, I'm just making up
names now Lee Greenwood, and you know what that means.
Whenever we mentioned Lee Greenwood, that's a new rule on
the podcast that Noel and I just made up. That
means that it's time to wrap up this episode of
(30:50):
a Ridiculous History. We hope that you enjoyed it and
we would as always love to hear from you. You
can find us in our whole team on Instagram. You
can find us on Facebook where we are Ridiculous History,
both of those, and feel free if you're already online
to drop us a suggestion. Let us know if there's
(31:10):
a particular episode in history that you would like us
to cover in an episode of our own. Are we
not being ridiculous enough? Are you know? Do you do?
Do you want to pick apart literally everything that we
say we're down? Just do it? Are you not entertained
by the ridiculousity that's both the speed of ridiculousness and
the direction to learn something new every day. Well, we
(31:32):
hope you guys learned something and then had a good time,
and hope you'll join us on the next installment Ridiculous History.
(32:00):
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