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 waltz concludes, the youth perform a square dance set to “Dixie” followed by a line dance set to a medley of Irish jigs. It’s all very lively and spring-like, even if April is autumn in the southern hemisphere. The girls in their gowns are capsized tulips skipping along invisible currents, and the boys are upstanding courtiers from an old-fashioned mating ritual. Another gown change and the girls come prancing out in pastel yellow to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Judging by the enthusiastic response, this is a crowd favorite. For me it’s dangerously close to a Lawrence Welk skit. Yet another gown change, and just when I thought I had this thing pegged as fifties Americana, the girls strut out in black petticoats and launch into a spirited, high-kicking cancan. If the girls get their way, this one will become another big crowd-pleaser. They’re practically begging for wolf whistles, throwing up their skirts to “Galop Infernal,” locking arms for an up-tempo chorus and building to a big rowdy finish.

It couldn’t get any better than that, so I slipped away from the main stage and strolled in the general direction of the cemetery, thinking how all of this could go terribly wrong—a benefit concert, the booking of a professional dance troupe from São Paulo, an overblown ribfest—and then I realized that if it was going to go wrong, it would’ve gone wrong already, but it hasn’t, because the Festa coordinators are not simple folk who take themselves too seriously, but accomplished professionals with bigger fish to fry. Cicero Carr is an engineer, and his cousin Daniel Carr de Muzio, an interpreter by trade, holds advanced degrees in sociology and cultural anthropology. Daniel’s son is a prominent surgeon in São Paulo, and his daughter is a practicing civil attorney, and those are just the first few folks I met. So no, this is not Mayberry, Brazil. These are disciplined, tough-minded individuals, worthy of their ancestors’ commitment to the Terra Nova.

A Long, Strange Trip