| Although there are perhaps as many as
100,000 Brazilians of Confederate descent, there are few obvious signs of
this in the towns most associated with them. AMERICANA, an hour
beyond Campinas, is a bustling city of about 150,000 people, but there are
only 25 English-speaking families. If curiosity does bring you here, the Rodoviária
is just a short walk from the centre of town; walk across the bridge in
front of the building and keep straight on for about ten minutes. |
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| On the main square, Praça
Comendador Muller, you’ll find the simple, but perfectly adequate hotel
Cacique (no phone; $10–20), and for a bit more comfort there’s
the Nacional at Rua Washington Luís 399 (tel 019/461-8210;
$35–50), and the Florença Palace, Av. Cillos 820 (tel
019/461-6393; $20–35). For food there are plenty of lanchonetes,
as well as a very good churrascaria, the Cristal, at Av.
Fortunato Faraoni 613. But apart from the odd Confederate emblem, don’t
expect much to do with the South.
Confederates in São Paulo
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| In the face of
humiliation, military defeat and economic devastation, thousands of former
American Confederates resolved to “reconstruct” themselves in
often distant parts of the world, forcing a wave of emigration without
precedent in the history of the United States. Brazil rapidly established
itself as one of the main destinations, offering cheap land, a climate
suited to familiar crops, political and economic stability, religious
freedom and – more sinisterly – the possibility of continued slave
ownership. Just how many Confederates came is unclear: suggested numbers
vary between 2000 and 20,000, and they settled all over Brazil, though it
was in São Paulo that they had the greatest impact. Although Iguape, on
the state’s southern stretch of coast, had a large Confederate
population, the most concentrated area of settlement was the Santa Bárbara
colony, in the area around present-day Americana and Santa Bárbara
d’Oeste.
The region’s climate and soil were ideally
suited to the growing of cotton and the Confederates’ expertise
soon made Santa Bárbara one of Brazil’s biggest producers of the crop.
As demand for Brazilian cotton gradually declined, many of the immigrants
switched to sugar cane, which remains the area’s staple crop,
though others, unable to adapt, moved into São Paulo city or returned to
the United States. |