Each spring, descendants of the Confederates who defected to Brazil at the close of the U.S. Civil War host a picnic in a graveyard of their forefathers in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, São Paulo with a motley crew of local dance moms, Freemasons and biker gangs. The Festa Confederada’s beating heart, its real crowd-pleaser, is an enactment of antebellum-era “folkloric” dances by men and boys in rebel uniforms and women and girls, some just babies, in frothy dresses that take months to sew. Increasingly, curious journalists, too, drive into the cane fields to query the festa’s Brazilian belles and local hawkers of Lynyrd Skynyrd covers, fried chicken and biscuits, and Confederate flag miscellany (keychains, flip-flops) available for purchase only with faux Confederate dollars.
