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Does the US Confederacy still exist in Americana, Brazil? · Ridiculous History

• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to the show. I'm Ben. Oh, hey, I'm sorry,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it's me. It's no, it's no. I'm here. I'm here,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I'm paying attention, and we're gonna talk about some ridiculous history. Yes,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and I believe that was a beautiful snatch of song
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: there only it would be more like, Uh, I wish
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I was in Brazil. Hooray, hooray in Brazil. L and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: gonna make my stand to live and die in Brazil. Yes,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that's true. And you may be wondering, Ben Nol, super
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram, what do these things have in common?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: What does that? Uh? What does that series of hypnotic
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: sensual music? Thank you? Yeah, look at look at me.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'm just a cloud of cotton candy and you're just
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the milk of human kindness. We are delving into something
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: that uh that that we were hipped to via our
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: friends Mangesh and will Over at Part Time Genius, one
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of our Pure podcast. They had an episode recently called
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: What's the most American place in the world parentheses outside
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of the United States. Yeah, And one of the things
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: that came up time and time again were the various
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Disneyland theme park attractions all across the globe. In fact,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: in a twenty sixteen study by Branding Magazine, around five
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: thousand people Americans were asked of which two hundred forty
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: brands best personified the patriotism of the United States and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: associated the Disney brand with US patriotism. But that is
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: not what our show is about today, because for truly
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: bizarro unusual taste of Americana outside of the US soil,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: we're going to head for the do do Do Do
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Do Do Do Do do do do umbras, Yes, my friends,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: specifically to the Brazilian state of South Polo. Uh. You see,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in South Polo there is a town, a not insignificant
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: town in terms of population, a city of about two
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand people called Americana. See we we
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: set it up earlier. This is true, and this city
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: um welcomed somewhere between. According to various accounts, ten thousand
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and twenty thousand American Southerners after the Confederates lost the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Civil War in the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, when the American
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Confederacy lost the bloody dispute known as the Civil War
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: here in the US. In May of eighteen sixty five
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: War between the States, the War between the States, brother
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: against Brother Blue v. Gray, all that stuff. A contingent
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: of these Southerners fled the United States entirely seeking to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: rebuild their lives and carry on the cultures to which
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: they were accustomed. And we do want to warn, of course,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that this is not all rainbow glitter trumpets and angel farts,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: as we will see angel farts. Yeah, you know, I'm
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: just including things that people probably like. You know, I
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: went to a store with my kid over the weekend
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and she but she's really in the slime, and she
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: bought the slime called unicorn farts. We're done talking about
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: farts now. Now we're going to talk about the settlers
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and where they came from, which was mainly Alabama, Georgia,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and Texas. And they, as Ben said, one to preserve
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: their unreconstructed Southern way of life and also escape possible
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: prosecution for treason, no big deal war crimes uh in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: this movement. This group movement occurs due primarily to a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: fellow named William Hutchison Norris. He is the founder of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: this town American of Brazil UH and he was a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Mexican American War veteran and also an Alabama senator. He
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: is the one who led the charge along with thirty
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Confederate families believe he was a colonel, right, Yeah, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: believe so, and he was. He was also just a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: side note here for anyone interested in some fringe history. Uh,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: he was a grand Master of the Alabama Masonic Lodge,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: which is not important to this story, but one of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: those Oh not to be confused with a grand wizard. No, no,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: no Alabama. Good luck planning, right, and not that we
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: aren flating, No, no, never, We would never, and I
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: mean that we would never. We actually we co host
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: a conspiracy realist podcast called Stuff They Don't Want You
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: to Know where if you want to hear more about
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Illuminati and the like and Masonic rights, check out that show.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so, Colonel Norris actually established this colony in
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: a town currently known as Santa Barbara d est Uh
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and it was actually sometimes referred to as the Norris Colony.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And the reason that these uh Confederatos as they were
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: ultimately referred to as, decided to make that trip was
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: because Brazil offered cheap land and slavery was still legal.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's one of the key things here. So
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of the people moving were agricultural experts, right.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Brazil offered cheap land and of incentives essentially, yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: an agricult cultural system with which these families were unfortunately
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: very familiar, which was of course the use of slave labor.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And at the time Brazil had an emperor, a fellow
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: named dom Pedro two, and he didn't just you know,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: turn a blind eye as these families moved in. He
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: wanted them there so much so that he offered to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: pay moving costs, which you know, I like the way
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Nol says it. Uh, the idea is essentially like tax incentives.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I think the cheap land came as an incentive. It
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was to entice these new settlers. And also Don Pedro
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  Speaker 1: the second was an ally I guess you could say
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of the Confederate cause. So he saw this as an
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: opportunity to get new types of agricultural expertise I guess
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in his country. One of those crops was cotton, which
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: as we know, is very important staple crop in the
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  Speaker 1: American South, and Brazilian farmers started to take up these
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: new farming methods that they were taught more or less
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: by the American settlers, the Confederatos, right, And this all
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: begins to happen very quickly after the close of the
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  Speaker 1: Civil War. By eighteen sixty six, the region was becoming
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  Speaker 1: noticeably populated with these immigrants from the United States. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: we should add that not all of them found success.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: There were thousands of people who accepted this deal, but
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  Speaker 1: only one group of settlers from Alabama, Norris is you know, Cadre,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, thrived and these uh,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: these folks had surnames that you can find in the
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  Speaker 1: town today like baired We got Buford, Clark, and Curry,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: among others. There's actually a memorial there to this day
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  Speaker 1: that highlights of these names like Sanders, Seawright, Skurlock, Smith, Steegel, Strong, Tanner.
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  Speaker 1: And again this all falls under the serenity of the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: suzeranity of Norris. So one thing that's fascinating is that
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the descendants of these settlers spoke English with a Southern
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  Speaker 1: accent for generations and over time, as people do, they
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: intermarried with Brazilians who have been living there since way before,
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  Speaker 1: and their numbers sword they thrived, they became. You would argue,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: would one would argue, well, actually everybody agrees. They became
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: essentially Brazilian, right, and not just some American exclave. But
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: like many people in the world, even in the modern day,
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  Speaker 1: the population of Americana, those two d thirty something thousand
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: people love Western music, love Western movies, and of the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: music they love, they're especially fond of wait for it,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: country music. Are you a fan of country music, man
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: country and or western? You know? I am a fan
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: of very old country, you know, my my family. Without
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: getting too deep into the murky past of the Bowling clan,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: they have a extensive roots in Appalachia. So bluegrass, gospel, hey,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: countryment not so, I'm not so much a modern country fan.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know what about you. I find most modern
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: country music to be pretty un listened a little, but
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  Speaker 1: I'm with you on the classics. Um so, let let's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: let's backtrack just to touch sure, let's uh, let's can
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: we get a can we get a backtrack? Thevegle noise? Okay,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: here we are only because I think this is interesting
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  Speaker 1: and worth mentioning, because I feel like we glossed over
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  Speaker 1: to the tad Don page or the second The ruler
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  Speaker 1: of Brazil during this time. He ruled from eighteen o
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: nine to eighteen sixty five. UM. He was a huge
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  Speaker 1: admirer of Abraham Lincoln. Actually, so we mentioned the whole
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: fact that, you know, slavery was still legal in Brazil,
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  Speaker 1: and that may have made it attractive to some of
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  Speaker 1: these settlers. They wanted to continue their way of life
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  Speaker 1: they were used to. But Don Pedro the second actually
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  Speaker 1: felt like the idea of slavery had the potential to
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  Speaker 1: cause a civil war in and in his own country,
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  Speaker 1: which retrospect seems painfully, painfully, painfully obvious. So he was
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  Speaker 1: all about getting rid of slavery, and when he kind
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  Speaker 1: of helped pushed through some measures that did that, he
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  Speaker 1: was basically deposed. But the work that he did to
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  Speaker 1: abolish slavery, you know, persevered, and he actually started with
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the uh, hopefully not bucher These too bad, but the
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  Speaker 1: Quiros Law of eighteen fifty, which outlawed the slave trade.
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  Speaker 1: And then his second one was to proclaim in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy one the Lido venture livro, which is the Law
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  Speaker 1: of the Free Womb, which declared that children born of
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  Speaker 1: slaves would also be free m is you know, and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: then Finally there was the lie area, the Golden Law,
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  Speaker 1: which abolished slavery completely in and that actually caused some
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  Speaker 1: of the folks that immigrated to Brazil to leave. Also
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: during this time when kind of the whole reconstruction situation
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  Speaker 1: changed and it became much more of the Jim Crow
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: you know, post abolition world that we know, uh and
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  Speaker 1: this spy. Yes. So there there are several really important
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  Speaker 1: things to underlying here. The Golden Law, if we just
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: use the English term for it, is the ultimate no
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: caveats manumission law, freeing one from slavery. The other laws
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  Speaker 1: were sort of gradually weakening the type of slavery that
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  Speaker 1: existed by degrees and all. Slavery is the plorable, repugnant
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  Speaker 1: and in my view, in human, but there are several
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  Speaker 1: different types. And the type of slavery that was practiced
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in the United States leading to the Civil War, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: then type of slavery that was practiced in Brazil at
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: the time intended to be something like chattel slavery. Definitely
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  Speaker 1: chattel slavery in the US and in Brazil a very
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  Speaker 1: similar system. This means that it's not say indentured servitude.
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  Speaker 1: It wouldn't be um. It wouldn't be for instance, someone
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  Speaker 1: being a slave for seven years until a debt is
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  Speaker 1: considered repaid. It's slavery based on bloodline, which means that
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  Speaker 1: automatically the child of a slave becomes a slave for life,
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  Speaker 1: no escape, and any kids that they have are going
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  Speaker 1: to be the property of whomever is considered legally to
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  Speaker 1: be the owner of that slave. The reason I brought
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: up the whole situation with slavery in Brazil was because
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  Speaker 1: actually some of the newly freed slaves in the US
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  Speaker 1: immigrated to Brazil as well, and sometimes they even came
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: with their previous owners. And I found this on an
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  Speaker 1: article on Project Gutenberg's self publishing press on the Confederados,
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  Speaker 1: and it says in this article that there was a
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  Speaker 1: situation where a former slave by the name of Steve
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  Speaker 1: Watson was given the run of a sawmill in Brazil
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  Speaker 1: that belonged to his former owner, a man by the
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  Speaker 1: name of Judge Dyer of Texas, and when Mr Watson
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: came back to the US, um Dyer actually deeded all
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: of his remaining property to Watson. In the area of
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  Speaker 1: the Jukia Valley um where there are many Brazilian families
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  Speaker 1: with the last name Vaseo, which the Portuguese way of
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: pronouncing Watson, So this legacy perseveres to this day in
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: a pretty interesting way. Many families did end up traveling
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: back to the United States during the reconstruction era. The
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: settlers who stayed became quickly successful. They get a reputation
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: for honesty and hard work. The new techniques they brought
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: for existing agricultural products worked well, but they also brought
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: new food crops and new ways of cooking food or
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: preparing it. And as we know, you can learn so
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: much about the human story through the transmission of food,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: whether we're talking spices like peppercorn or saffron, whether we're
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: talking staples like rice, or how tomatoes made it to Italy,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: which is its own other story. I guess before I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: derail as too much, let be let me stay focused
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: on Brazil. I think it's because I just I didn't
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: eat before we came in here. So now food history
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: is automatically, uh, automatically capturing my mind to just pound
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the rest of that five hour energy. Dude, just do it,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: do it? Do it? Uh. Some some of the dishes
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: that were standouts that we're very popular in this area Brazil,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: where things like chess pie or vinegar pie, fried chicken
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: vinegar pie. Vinegar pie doesn't have the most appealing name.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I would grant you that. Uh it's it's like eggs
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: with a little bit of cinnamon, sugar and two tablespoons
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of cider vinegar. He makes something like you feed two
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: kids when they've misbehaved or no. It's the thing people
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: people eat it for fun and it has sort of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: an apple pie like flavor because of the cider, but
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: there's a custardy vibe to it as well. You know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I haven't tried it. I'd love to hear from someone
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: who has. Maybe you know what, Friends and neighbors, thank
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you so much for listening to show. I'd like to
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: defer to you on this. If you have tried vinegar pie,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: let us know if this is something that we should
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: delve into, if we should try it ourselves, or you know,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: warn us if it's a traumatic experience for you. The
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Southern food, right, the Southern food is is pretty pretty
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: successful and it catches on and as we said, these
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Confederados as they were called, I guess, continue their culture
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: and as best they could right, and similar to the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: hippos that traveled to Columbia with Pablo Escobar, they thrived
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: in a way that might seem, you know, counterintuitive at first,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to the point that this is not just an odd
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: historical footnote, it's a ridiculous historical footnote, right, yes, And
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it's a current practice because if you travel down to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Americana Brazil today, you will not just see one monuments
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and maybe a couple of placards and old farms roll plantations. No,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: depending on when you go, you might find yourself in
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the midst of a very strange, very strange party, something
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of a shin dig, something of a suare. You see
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: every year for the last quarter century, the descendants of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: these Confederados gather for a gigantic party that celebrates their
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: vision of Confederate culture, which, you know what is sort
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of reminds me of did you ever go to Six
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Flags over Georgia? Yeah? I have season passes. You know
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that about me? Ben, No, I'm setting you up the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still the same because it's
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: talking about Lick Skillet Junction right right where they've got
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Dixie music playing the whole time. I almost picture it
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: like that. So the population of the town gets together.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: They dress up in gray like Johnny reb uniforms and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: then hoop skirts and they dance around to fiddle and
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: banjo tunes and then the copious amounts of Confederate flag wavings,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: shall we say wavings. They even have a dance floor
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: emblazoned with the what do they call it, old old
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: old glory, that's it. Yeah, And they're not alone. Over
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the years, reporters have traveled to check out the celebration,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and uh so have Confederate enthusiasts from the United States,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: nan actors descendants themselves from Confederate soldiers and the like.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: In fact, the first of all the party, the annual
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: festival is called the Festa Confederata and um, you know
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I said, it's marked by Confederate flags, Confederate uniforms, the
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: hoop skirts you mentioned, um, and this fusion of you know,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Southern culture with Brazilian culture, dancing, um, popular music that
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you know, like you're saying, banjo music and all the
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: stuff that you would have heard during the Antebellum period.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: And they have this affection, this affinity, if you will,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: for the Confederate flag and then as you know, listeners,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: as you know, this is something of a problematic emblem
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: today more than ever, I would say, in our country. Yes,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: here in the United States as we record this in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Uh, the nation is engaging in a debate
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: about symbols and their historical significance. And one of the
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: big flashpoints for this in our country is always going
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: to be, or has always been, up to now, the
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Confederate flag. Since the end of the Civil War to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the modern day. People have argued back and forth about
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: what waving this flag means, right, And the same thing
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: goes for statues monuments. You know. We are based in Atlanta,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: where we are just a few minutes drive away from
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a gigantic Confederate monument. It known as Stone Mountain. Yeah,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it's literally a mountain with a big old Confederate scene
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: shell we say, um carved into the rock. Um. Who
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: are those dudes? Yeah, there are three Confederate figures depicted
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in just gigantic scale on on Stone Mountain there, Jefferson Davis,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. It's interesting because with
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: all the talk these days in the news about you know,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: removing Confederate monuments from um cities, the courthouse offensive, they're offensive,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: they shouldn't be on public land, etcetera. Uh, it came out.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting that Roberty Lee it was kind of
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: against Confederate monuments in the first place, and then they
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: didn't really pop up until years, you know, after the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Civil War. It's a really great quote from Roberty Lee
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: where he says, quote, I think it wiser not to
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: keep open the source of war with to follow the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: it engendered. And so back to Brazil. Is actually a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: really fantastic article in the New York Times about this town.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: This Santa Barbara de Asto, Yeah, yeah, by Simon Romero.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Right's right in the very first sentence um in the article.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote because this is great. The set scene
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Santa Barbara Deasto, Brazil, on a stage festooned with Confederate flags.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: The singer was belting out dixieland Delight by Alabama near
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: an obelisk, honoring the Americans who fled to this outpost
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Civil War. Here's the important quote.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: We're not racists, says Cissero car fifty four, an engineer
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: whose great great grandfather hailed from Texas. Wearing a fedora
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: featuring the rebel battle flag. He explained in Portuguese, we're
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: just revering our ancestors who had the good sense to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: settle in Brazil. This is actually a really really interesting touchpoint,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: like considering what's going on in our country right now
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and the ar uments for and against removing these relics
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of the past, and whether it actually means you're actively
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: being racist or you're actively um celebrating celebrating slavery in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: some way, or you know, um. And I think this
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: is a very interesting case study where this is almost
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: like a weird back to the Disneyland thing. This is
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: almost like this kind of removed version of this, you know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: where it's not functional exactly. It's like a I don't know,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I I think I see what you're saying. Because, as
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: as we'll find out at the end, this is not
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the only situation where something like this has occurred foreign
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: country or in a non US country, or let's even
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: go further and say a country not directly associated with
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the conflict UH that is, you know, being celebrated, and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: it's very important for us to underline these these following things.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The average person celebrating this sees it as a celebration
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: of their own history, the history of Americana Brazil. They
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: do not see it as a, as we said, a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: celebration of slavery, or in any way a celebration of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: man's in humanity to man or people's in humanity two people. Rather.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: In fact, the Confederados have downplayed their ancestors interest in
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: maintaining UH slavery system. But you know, this doesn't just
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: include the context of the US. We must also include
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the context of Brazil, which was the last country in
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: either American continent to abolish slavery. It wasn't until eighteen
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: eighty eight. And then after that, slave like conditions and
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: situations continued. There were still going to be you know,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: agricultural wage slavery, despite the best efforts of our boy
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Dumpage or the second despite his best efforts. And this
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: means that despite the intervening decades, including nineteen forty where
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: there was a constitutional amendment prohibiting employers from submitting workers
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to quote conditions analogous to slavery. Um Brazil was still
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: desperate to modernize, and this incentivize farm owners to start
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: putting wage laborers in debt and then holding them in bondage,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: preventing their freedom of movement off the plantation. So more
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: that indentured servitude exactly exactly, and Americana itself got caught
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: up in this controversy in two thousand thirteen, in January,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the Brazilian Ministry of Labor orchestrated a sting in Americana
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and it found Bolivian immigrants manufacturing baby clothes under the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: supervision of two Bolivian bosses. Uh they broke up the factory,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the Ministry of Labor, that is, and they sued. They
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: said the conditions they found were deplorable or execrable enough
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to constitute slavery. But of every single person or the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: average person, again that you ask about slavery in this town,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: most people will say, well, I don't there's no slavery here,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and this is not in any way a celebration of that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: So what seems to be a flashpoint of conflict here
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: in the United States is simply a the same thing
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: as like the annual town Fair. I think that's what
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I was kind of poorly stumbling my way toward earlier.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Is that it feels like that Six Flags or Disneyland
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: kind of recreation of a of a situation where the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: roots of negativity are somehow kind of whitewashed away a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: little bit. It doesn't mean I don't it's still kind
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: of picked me out a little bit, to be honest,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But it's interesting. And in fact,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in nine teen seventy two, Jimmy Carter came to the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: region for a visit to Americana, and in you know,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in preparing for his visit, the Americana actually added the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Confederate flag into its municipal coat of arms. UM. But
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: actually most people that live there these days are Italian descended,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: so they removed it because the descendants of the Confederatos
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: apparently now comprised only about a tenth of the population
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of the area. UM. But when Carter was there, he
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: visited the Santa Barbara de Este and visited the grave
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of um a relative of his wife Rosalind her relatives
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: was one of the original Confederatos, and while he was
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: there he couldn't help but notice that everyone just seemed
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: just like good old Southerners because we know Jimmy Carter
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: being from Atlanta as we are. Um, he is the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: portrait of a Southern gentleman. Yes, yes, he knows it
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: when he sees. So if you're listening to this, Jimmy,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: feel free to give us a call. Well, answer the phone.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: It's actually really nice, guys, several where coworkers of metam.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: He does all this habitat for humanity stuff, and he's
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: got the Carter Center does all this amazing work election monitoring,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: yet disease uh, disease mitigation. Yeah, so Nolan, I want
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: to be clear that we're not denigrating the people in
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Americana who celebrate this way. We're hopefully painting some of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the context here. Because the idea of and exclave, you know,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the idea of people moving to a foreign country and
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: attempting to make it function as if it is just
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the same thing as the country from which they originated.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: It's it's a fairly i don't want to say common,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: but it's not as rare as it might sound, you know,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and there have been multiple attempts in South America, even
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in Brazil by West nurse to sort of recreate the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: concept of the small town USA or the Confederacy or
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: whatever their cultural slice of the vinegar pie that his
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: American history might be. Still I feel about that. Can
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: we call it something else? Uh? Do you want to
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: call it delicious? Yum yum pie, apple cider pie. I'm
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: fine with that. That's a little better with that, Hey, listeners,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: what do you think it should be called? What should have?
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Disgusting food stuff? How can you make it more palatable
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: just by changing the name? And is it disgusting? Is
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: it just the name? I'm being I'm being judging because
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: there's like barley water probably awesome. Have you ever heard
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of barley water beer? No? No, in in the UK?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I swear it's squash. And then of course Spotted Dick
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: remember that maybe King Ralph with John? Yeah, that was
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: great that there's a big joke in that. You're welcome,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: girl talk. We just gave them an idea for the
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: next album. I do want to close with just let's
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: let's call it a teaser if we can. For another
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: strange relationship between American governments or the US government and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: a South American area. It turns out that in Paraguay
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: President Rutherford B. Hayes is immensely popular. Do you ever
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: hear about this? Yeah? He uh, he's immensely popular because
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: he awarded territory to Paraguay as an arbiter in a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: boundary dispute between Paraguay and Argentina after the Paraguay and War.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: And we were not gonna we're not gonna just segue
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: into that as a whole another episode. But if you're
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: interested in these sorts of stories, this is a great read.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So find out why Rutherford B. Hayes, who is not
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a name you here often in the US anymore, Oh,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Ruthie b Yeah right right. Actually people had at the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: time his opponents called him Ruther Fraud. I know, it's dirty,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: dirty pool, but find you can find out why he
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: remains immensely popular in parts of Paraguay today. And we
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: hope that you will let us know if you find
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: your way down to the Festa Confederata in Brazil. And
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: uh side note, if you're a George Straight fan, Oh buddy,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: this is supposed to be right up your alley. I'm
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: proud to be in nuts. Who's that Leon Green Steve
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Greenwood case he just told me, I'm just making up
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: names now Lee Greenwood, and you know what that means.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Whenever we mentioned Lee Greenwood, that's a new rule on
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the podcast that Noel and I just made up. That
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: means that it's time to wrap up this episode of
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a Ridiculous History. We hope that you enjoyed it and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: we would as always love to hear from you. You
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: can find us in our whole team on Instagram. You
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook where we are Ridiculous History,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: both of those, and feel free if you're already online
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to drop us a suggestion. Let us know if there's
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a particular episode in history that you would like us
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to cover in an episode of our own. Are we
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: not being ridiculous enough? Are you know? Do you do?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Do you want to pick apart literally everything that we
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: say we're down? Just do it? Are you not entertained
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: by the ridiculousity that's both the speed of ridiculousness and
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the direction to learn something new every day. Well, we
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: hope you guys learned something and then had a good time,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and hope you'll join us on the next installment Ridiculous History.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: The