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