Jordan Brasher received funding from National Security Education Program's David L The University of Tennessee’s Thomas-Penley-Allen Fellowship McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs Macalester College provides funding as a member of The Conversation US View all partners There were no antebellum hoop skirts at the site of Brazil’s annual “Festa Confederada,” or Confederate Festival Flag poles that once flew the Brazilian flag alongside the red white and blue rebel banner of the American Confederacy stood barren Since 1980, the Confederate Festival – a series of cultural performances and culinary experiences combining Brazilian traditions with those of the American South – has occurred each April in rural São Paulo State Southern fried chicken and barbecue is typically served at the Confederate Festival alongside Brazilian side dishes such as “farofa,” or toasted cassava flour ornately dressed performers cover American country songs and dance the two-step They present the flags of the 11 Confederate states for thousands of Brazilian tourists and descendants But in an international echo of a movement that has gripped the United States in recent years Confederate symbols are now getting banned in Brazil I am a geographer who analyzes the history and meaning of Confederate symbols in the U.S The rally opposed the city’s planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee The event, organized by the Fraternity of American Descendants – a nonprofit Confederate descendants organization founded in 1954 to maintain “the historical and cultural heritage of North American immigrants to Brazil” – had been held largely without controversy for over three decades “We indignantly and vehemently repudiate the symbols present at the Festa Confederada,” the protesters said in an April 18, 2019, statement written by a local group called UNEGRO and signed by over 100 other civic groups in Brazil In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the festival to shutter. And, soon, George Floyd’s murder reignited a global wave of outrage against symbols of racism and colonialism Since 2015, when the Black Lives Matter movement erupted nationwide, at least 113 Confederate statues have been removed from cities across the American South But other removal efforts have been thwarted, usually by state lawmakers many Southern states have either passed laws protecting them as historic artifacts or dusted off and enforced old preservation laws For example, when Birmingham, Alabama’s mayor tried to remove the city’s Confederate monument in 2019, he was blocked by the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 the city agreed to pay the state a US$25,000 fine in exchange for the right to remove the memorial Similar “statue statutes” in Tennessee, Georgia and elsewhere continue to frustrate local efforts to remove monuments that glorify a chapter of American history that many people find painful Protesters in Durham, North Carolina, refused to wait for the state to repeal its preservation law. In 2017 they toppled a monument erected in 1924 “in memory of the boys who wore the gray” themselves a similarly contentious debate was roiling the Brazilian city of Santa Bárbara d’Oeste Soon after Heyer’s death in Charlottesville, UNEGRO organized a public debate with the Fraternity of American Descendants on the meaning of the Confederate symbol The two sides did not find much middle ground The 2018 and 2019 Confederate Festivals maintained their display of Confederate iconography UNEGRO asked the city council to revoke the fraternity’s event permit if it kept using the Confederate symbol In January 2021, council member Esther Moraes proposed a new law prohibiting the use of symbols “that support movements or institutions identified with racist or segregationist ideas” at public events Moraes did not oppose the Confederate Festival itself “Everyone has the right to commemorate their ancestors,” she said “but they should do it with respect for the history of other people and the descendants of slavery Ours is the only city in Brazil where the Confederate symbol flies at a public festival.” City officials passed the law banning Confederate symbols from public events in June 2022 anyway. The Fraternity of American Descendants issued a brief statement that its Confederate Festival would not take place in 2023 In April 2024, instead of its traditional festival, the group held a picnic “open to descendants and friends of the Fraternity of American Descendants.” The smell of barbecue wafted through the air as Brazilian descendants of the American South filled their plates against a backdrop of Brazil’s first Baptist church On the stage where country line dancers once performed few traces remained of the red and blue paint that had emblazoned it with the Confederate emblem the Fraternity of American Descendants announced plans to rebrand and relaunch its flagship festival The Confederate Festival will now be called “Festa dos Americanos” – Festival of the Americans – and stripped of all Confederate symbols “The institution, feeling that it created discomfort for the city and its Black residents, decided to change its position,” said Fraternity of American Descendants President Marcelo Dodson Yet removing Confederate names, flags and symbols from public spaces at least cracks open the door for a path forward into a different future It presents countries an opportunity to grapple with history instead of repeating or ignoring cycles of violence and harm My research on Confederate iconography and other work in critical memory studies suggests that interventions focused on alternative commemorations – such as candlelight vigils and truth and reconciliation commissions – can help repair a society “We have a commitment to the younger generation,” said UNEGRO leader and historian Claudia Monteiro on the day Santa Bárbara d’Oeste banned Confederate symbols Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Brazil (AP) - It had all the trappings of a down-home country fair somewhere well below the Mason-Dixon line: Lynyrd Skynyrd medleys and a plethora of Confederate flags emblazoning everything from belt buckles to motorcycle vests to trucker.. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Chattanooga Times Free Press Material from the Associated Press is Copyright © 2025 audio and/or video material shall not be published rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use The AP will not be held liable for any delays errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing Subscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownIn This Brazilian Town The Confederate Flag Flies As High As EverAfter losing the Civil War some 10,000 Confederates migrated to Santa Barbara D'Oeste deep in the sugar cane region of southern Brazil Today their descendants get together annually to celebrate all things Southern — including the flag You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience Siemens Energy will supply both the power generation and compression packages for the Petrobras-operated P-78 FPSO The ability to contribute to meet P-78 local content requirements through Siemens Energy’s manufacturing and packaging facility in Santa Barbara d’Oeste São Paulo was part of the project execution plan Siemens Energy was awarded a contract from Keppel Offshore & Marine to supply the topsides turbomachinery package for the P-78 floating The FPSO is owned and operated by Brazil-based Petrobras in partnership with Chinese CNOOC and CNODC and will operate in the Búzios Field of the Santos Basin located approximately 200 km (124 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in water depths ranging from 1600 – 2100 m (5249 – 6890 ft) Siemens Energy’s scope of supply for the project includes the power generation and compression packages for the facility The power supply will be met with four gas turbine generator packages and injection gas compression duties will be met with eight electric motor-driven compressor trains Two additional trains featuring aeroderivative gas turbines driving centrifugal compressors will be used for reinjection of CO2 back into the reservoir P-78 will have a processing capacity of 180 000 bpd and 7.2 million m3/d of gas Siemens Energy’s ability to contribute to P-78 local content requirements for the project through its manufacturing and packaging facility in Santa Barbara d’Oeste in the São Paulo province was a valuable consideration in the project execution plan The facility was commissioned in 2013 and has played a critical role in meeting localisation mandates established by the Brazilian National Petroleum Agency (ANP) on several major oil and gas development projects in South America Industrial Applications at Siemens Energy said: “We are proud to support Brazil’s efforts to promote the use of local content in its offshore hydrocarbon sector The equipment packages selected for the P-78 FPSO will enable Petrobras to efficiently and sustainably exploit reserves from the Búzios field the contract award is yet another example of our growing presence in the region and our emergence as a preferred supplier of rotating equipment for the offshore FPSO market.” Delivery of the equipment is slated for 2023 The P-78 FPSO is expected to enter operation in 2025 Read the latest issue of Oilfield Technology in full for free: Spring 2022 Oilfield Technology’s first issue of 2022 begins with analysis from Wood Mackenzie on the disconnect between surging oil prices and US oil production growth and investment The rest of the issue is dedicated to features covering sand removal technology subsea compression systems and smart instrument measurement Exclusive contributions come from TETRA Technologies MAN Energy Solutions and Winters Instruments Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/11042022/siemens-energy-to-supply-topsides-turbomachinery-scope-for-bzios-6-fpso-project/ SLB has announced the award by bp of a substantial EPCI contract for the Ginger project offshore Trinidad and Tobago Embed article link: (copy the HTML code below): This article has been tagged under the following: Already a member? Sign in here When the Confederates lost the U.S a significant number of them feared reprisal from the Yankees and life in a society where their former slaves had been freed So thousands of Confederates left for other places This aspect of history was surprising to many on the internet, and has long been a lesser-known chapter in studies of the Confederacy One particular celebration of Confederate history even continues in Brazil According to the Washington Post these celebrations have been ongoing for decades and have been held by the descendants of the Confederates in the twin cities of Americana and Santa Bárbara d'Oeste Among the prominent Confederates who left the U.S. was the family of William H. Morris, a former Alabama state senator. According to History.com and sent for the rest of his family to move there as though the Civil War had not happened This move was possible due to the efforts of Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II who was a staunch ally of the Confederacy He offered thousands of white southerners the chance to move to Brazil in the 1860s and 1870s The then-empire of Brazil was also one of the last places in the Americas to abolish slavery Confederates were able to settle there and recreate aspects of their lives and elsewhere in the decades after the war no one really kept track of how many went to Brazil Brazil only began to keep accurate immigration records in 1884 and the early migrants did not have passports; they simply boarded ships and moved south The abolitionist movement in Brazil was clearly winning out when the southerners stepped off the ships Perhaps some of the immigrants had begun to question the morality of slavery although there is no written evidence to support this contention they were lured by the low cost of paid farm labor in Brazil as well as the possibility of owning slaves cheap labor could provide a decisive edge over their compatriots who stayed in the U.S The town of Americana near São Paulo became a major location where Confederates partially recreated their old lives. The town did not start out with that name, but when Morris and other Confederates settled there, their "American" traditions returned. According to Harter: First-generation Confederates like Colonel Norris continued to consider themselves Americans not the U.S.A.; but still they were Americans The Fourth of July holiday was the major event of the year it should come as no surprise that the name of their town became Americana But it was the Brazilians in the neighborhood who chose that name in reference to the place where their neighbors In the 1870s when the railroad from Såo Paulo was completed the Confederados had begun to build their houses near the railroad station For approximately twenty-five years the cluster of homes and shops grew and the settlement took on the name Estaçåo (the station) always called the town Villa Americana in response to the obviously foreign ethnic character of its majority population and sanitary services to the group around the station met in January 1900 and incorporated the town The Confederados offered no objection to the choice continued to call it the station long into the twentieth century Yet today, according to The New York Times there are still yearly gatherings that celebrate the Confederacy and wave the flag that is so controversial back in the U.S In an April 2016 Festa Confederada (Confederate Party) celebration no one registered the meaning of the flag to Black people descended from slaves Others expressed their condemnation of the Charleston shooting of Black people by a white gunman saying it was a "clear example of intolerance." Attendees described the Confederate flag as a symbol of "family "There's an attempt by the Confederados to erase the interest in slavery as a principal motivation for their arrival in Brazil."  that at least 54 families bought at least 536 slaves upon entering Brazil In 1888 months before the abolition of slavery in Brazil Klink carried out the brutal lynching of Joaquim Firmino an abolitionist police chief in a town near Santa Bárbara d'Oeste This they had acquired from the Brazilians." And yet in celebrations from recent years, attendees ate southern fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and square danced, and some wore Confederate army uniforms in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. Asher Levine, a Sao Paulo-based correspondent for Reuters, told the BBC that many of the people celebrating saw themselves as expressing pride in their American heritage a number of activists demanded that the celebrations lower the Confederate flag Generations after Gunter moved to Brazil would write in The Point magazine about her experience researching the celebrations and learning about her shared history with Rita Lee Imagine my surprise to learn Lee — a central figure in Brazilian music history — was a confederada who grew up attending the festa in Santa Bárbara how the confederados have always been a multiracial crew She writes that as a girl she watched her father joke with the family's ex-slave who accompanied her great-grandfather from Alabama to Brazil where she served as the "dama de companhia" for her grandmother until she died Lee remembers Olímpia's American Creole — indeed the entire arrangement — as "fofa," or "cute." Brazilian law prohibited the immigration of free Black people so formerly enslaved people who immigrated with their former traffickers were thus re-conscripted into slavery but perhaps this historical perversion explains Olímpia's lifelong "companionship" to Lee's grandmother In much of this research I have felt a queasy revulsion — and I don't think it's appropriate necessarily that I felt more sharply outraged by Lee's attitude toward her — our — forebears [My child] Ami and his babysitter Mateus had found me unhappily eating pão de queijo; I handed the remaining snacks and Lee's book to Mateus His whole body made an exclamation point when he realized I'd correctly understood the Portuguese Most Brazilians don't know that it's "Lee" in honor of General Lee I'd confessed that I was planning on going to the festa to write about it but that I wasn't sure if I should bring Ami gender-fluid child would not go to a Confederate party with a bunch of bikers and men dressed as Confederate soldiers in the middle of São Paulo's interior And in 2022 a new ordinance could end the practice of displaying the flag a local ordinance was passed that banned the use of "racist symbols" and specifically named the Confederate flag as part of the justification for the law The law also bans the distribution of public funds to organizations and events that display such symbols Some say it could put the festival at risk but others argue that it is a chance to balance the historic narrative being told about the Confederate immigrants "We are not against people celebrating their ancestors," City Councilwoman Esther Moraes told the Christian Science Monitor She wrote and sponsored the law and insisted the festival could continue celebrating American heritage "The issue is the use of Confederate symbols [...] that represent the oppression that our Black population doesn't want to carry any longer." https://www.myeasternshoremd.com/obituaries/eugene-c-harter/article_12c596f7-6695-5d56-9895-6d9f3624fe28.html "The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil." HISTORY https://www.history.com/news/confederacy-in-brazil-civil-war "New Law Could Mark End of American Confederacy – in Brazil." Christian Science Monitor https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2022/0816/New-law-could-mark-end-of-American-Confederacy-in-Brazil https://thepointmag.com/politics/os-confederados/ "A Slice of the Confederacy in the Interior of Brazil." The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/world/americas/a-slice-of-the-confederacy-in-the-interior-of-brazil.html "The Town in Brazil That Embraces the Confederate Flag." BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33245800 "They Lost the Civil War and Fled to Brazil Their Descendants Refuse to Take down the Confederate Flag." Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is a reporter with experience working in television This material may not be reproduced without permission Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com A new municipal law could mark the end of an annual celebration of the Confederacy in rural Sao Paulo, Brazil, according to The Christian Science Monitor. has been taking place in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste for the past four decades and set up a colony nearby Santa Bárbara d'Oeste.  They bought hundreds of slaves who they forced to labor for them on cotton fields until 1888 when Brazil became the last nation in the Americas to ban slavery the descendants of the American Confederates host an annual festival The festival includes men and women dancing in period costumes to country music Attendees use "Confederate dollars" to buy chicken and biscuits according to The Christian Science Monitor which bans the use of racist symbols at public festivals A justification for the legislation passed last month specifically named the festival The head of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana a group that represents the descendants of Confederate families told the paper that he opposes the new law because he believes the Confederate flag does not represent slavery the Confederate flag carries the symbolism of resistance to tyranny," said João Padovez But activist Cláudia Monteiro da Rocha Ramos told the paper that the local chapter of Unegro is proposing that Confederate flags are replaced with the modern-day US flag.  [the US] debate about the flag resonated in Brazil," she said Unegro started mobilizing after the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville At the last Confederate Festival in 2019 the last one held because of COVID-19 cancelations dozens of protesters gathered nearby to perform Afro-Brazilian dances On a stage decorated with a huge rebel flag good ol' boys wearing jeans and Stetsons or US Civil War uniforms are dancing to country and western songs with southern belles wearing hoop-skirted ball gowns Others are mingling at food stands selling Southern fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits But we're not in South Carolina or Texas – this is Santa Barbara d'Oeste is put on every year by descendants of families who fled from the southern United States to Brazil after the end of the US Civil War Thousands of Southerners moved to Brazil in the 1860s and 1870s Slavery had been outlawed in the US in 1865 so the Americans could own slaves to work in the fields Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery but some settled and assimilated with local Brazilians their descendants are racially mixed and many don't speak English The festival is held at the American Cemetery the epitaphs on their gravestones written in English The festival is not associated with the negative connotations of the Confederacy and the flag carries no stigma or political meaning in Brazil The Mero 3 FPSO is expected to have a processing capacity of 180,000 b/d of oil and 12 MMcm/d of gas The company’s scope of supply includes the EPC work for all eight modules and several key components: two electric low-pressure centrifugal compressors; two electric CO2 compressors; three main injection compressors driven by Siemens Energy SGT-A35-GT62X gas turbines; four Siemens Energy SGT-A35-GT30 gas turbines for power generation; an E-house; and all electricals including an electrical control and management system (ECMS) The ECMS is being designed to provide monitoring and supervision for the power generation and distribution network for load management of the FPSO facility MISC Berhad and the FPSO operator can use the ECMS to monitor FPSO power Industrial Applications Products for Siemens Energy said: “Our mission is to help our partners in their energy transition by providing the equipment and support to create thoughtful and sustainable change without compromising their ability to meet the world’s growing energy needs.”