By Gary Hawkins | Sept/Oct 08 | Features

The Lost Confederados

Why thousands of Southerners fled to Brazil after the Civil War, why they stayed, and why their descendants still remember

When the flags are up, a tribute to the Confederacy begins. The event resembles a Miss Teen USA pageant, and the girls pull it off so convincingly that it almost feels like a parody. Teen and preteen girls, wearing sashes to represent their states, form a line across the stage. Their escorts are the same dapper young men who hoisted the flags, each now bearing a state flag. When a moderator calls a state, its representative steps forward to a smattering of applause, and some variation on this we’ve all seen. The feature that stands out, the one quality that makes the tribute more Brazilian than Southern, is the defiant, check-me-out posture of the young ladies. It goes like this: A moderator speaking with the relaxed monotone of a fashion show emcee calls for Miss Georgia and she steps forward, hands on her hips, chin lifted, sweeping the crowd with her gaze as if coached to make eye contact with everyone there. The moderator says something in Portuguese, then “state song by Ray Char-lees, ‘Georgia On My Mind-ee,’” after which Miss Georgia swings her hips away from the crowd and steps aside. The same routine is performed by all of them, even a deliberately nerdy nine-year-old with thick glasses and a schoolmarmish hair bun.

The baddest of the bad girls is probably Miss Tennessee, a raven-haired beauty with impressive shoulders, a garnet gown, and black formal gloves. She parks her hands on her hips, shifts her weight to one foot, and looks me dead in the eye. Intended or not, these gestures are downright provocative, and now I’m wondering how tough it would be for a Protestant colonist to look the other way when the right Catholic local came along. Intermarriage for the first generation of Confederados—easily the most xenophobic—is estimated at 17 percent. From there the number escalated, and something in this hand-to-hip maneuver suggests the reason for it.

Announcements, presentations, and some awards. Cicero Carr is buying time for a gown change. When he finishes, the young adults return to the stage, the boys unchanged and the girls in bright, off-primary hoopskirts—crimson, lavender, custard, periwinkle, pomegranate, fandango, and fuchsia. The music is cued and they launch into an energetic period dance that I’ve seen somewhere before, but it’s not until they segue into a group waltz that I recognize it as a re-staging of the Virginia reel–waltz montage from Gone With the Wind. “Tonight I want to dance,” Scarlett tells Rhett. “Tonight I would dance with Abe Lincoln himself.” Maybe I don’t get out (of the country) enough, but this demonstration of Hollywood’s image-making authority took me by surprise. The Confederates migrate to Brazil, form an isolated society largely immune to four generations of American homogenization, and Hollywood still manages to rewrite their history for them.