HoangsaParacels:Trong cuộc Nội Chiến tại Hoa Kỳ, Bắc Quân giải phóng chế độ nô lệ dành cho người da đen tại các tiểu bang miền Nam. Oái oăm thay trong cuộc nội chiến tại Việt Nam, cộng sản Bắc Việt đã "giải phóng" bằng cách choàng ách nô lệ vào cổ dân miền Nam đang có cuộc sống no cơm ấm áo và đã được hưởng một nền tự do, dân chủ tuy còn trong tình trạng phôi thai; khiến cho tình đoàn kết dân tộc trở nên thật nan giải không biết bao giờ mới hàn gắn được.
150 năm trước đây một số Nam Quân Mỹ đã vượt biên sống lưu vong tại Brasil gần thành phố Americana, sau khi tướng Robert E. Lee đầu hàng Bắc Quân ngày 09 tháng Tư năm 1865 ( lại tháng Tư Đen) tại Appomattox, trong trận chiến Nam Bắc giải phóng nô lệ do Tổng Thống Abraham Lincoln lãnh đạo. Cho đến nay họ vẫn tôn sùng lá cờ Confederate chẳng khác nào người Việt tỵ nạn bảo vệ lá cờ Vàng.
Trong những dịp lễ lạt họ đều chào cờ, hát quốc ca the Confederate battle song "Stonewall Jackson's Way", phụ nữ mặc áo dài thêu cờ Confederate, còn quý ông mặc quân phục truyền thống giống như ở hải ngoại chúng ta trương cờ Vàng các bà hay cuốn khăn đeo cổ, mặc áo dài thêu cờ vàng và các cựu quân nhân thường mặc quân phục VNCH. Thật là những điểm tương đồng hiếm hoi cuả những người bảo thủ không chiụ khuất phục kẻ thắng trận và truyền thống này lưu truyền cho đến đời con cháu trên xứ người.
One day last spring, near an old rural cemetery in southern
Brazil, a
black man named Marcelo Gomes held up the corners of a Confederate flag
to pose for a cell-phone photo. After the picture was taken, Gomes said
he saw no problem with a black man paying homage to the history of the
Confederate States of America. "American culture is a beautiful
culture," he said. Some of his friends had Confederate blood.
Gomes had joined some 2,000 Brazilians at the annual festa of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, the brotherhood of Confederate descendants in Brazil, on a plot near the town of Americana, which was settled by Southern defectors 150 years ago. The graveyard is usually empty save for its caretaker or the odd worshipper drawn to its little brick chapel. On the April morning of the festa, a public-address system blaring the Confederate battle song "Stonewall Jackson's Way" had interrupted the cemetery's silence. Brazilians in ten-gallon hats and leather jackets called out greetings.
For miles around the graveyard, unfiltered sun beat down on sugarcane fields planted by the thousands of Confederates who had rejected Reconstruction and fled the United States in the wake of the Civil War—a voluntary exile that American history has more or less erased. Their scattered diaspora has gathered annually for the past 25 years. The party they throw, which receives funding from the local government, is the family reunion of the Confederados, one of the last remaining enclaves of the children of the unreconstructed South.
Brazilians filed past a Rebel-flag banner emblazoned with the Southern maxim: heritage, not hate. They lined up at a booth where they traded Brazilian reals for the festa's legal tender, printout Confederate $1 bills. (The exchange rate was 1:1—the Southern economy had apparently survived.) Kids flocked to the trampoline and moon bounce. Old-timers staked out shade beneath white tents. Early on, the line for fried chicken grew almost too long to brave.
Under a tent, I picked at some chicken and watched a young blond Brazilian woman maneuver an enormous Confederate-flag hoop skirt into a chair. I wondered what she made of the symbol. She introduced herself as Beatrice Stopa, a reporter for Glamour Brazil. Her grandmother, Rose May Dodson, ran the Confederado fraternity. She'd been dancing at the festa since she was a kid.
I asked if she knew there was a connection between slavery and the American South. "I've never heard that before," she said. She wasn't sure why her ancestors had left the States. "I know they came. I don't really know the reason," she said. "Is it because of racism?" She smiled, embarrassed. "Don't tell my grandmother!"
http://www.vice.com/read/welcome-to-americana-brazil-0000580-v22n2
Trong những dịp lễ lạt họ đều chào cờ, hát quốc ca the Confederate battle song "Stonewall Jackson's Way", phụ nữ mặc áo dài thêu cờ Confederate, còn quý ông mặc quân phục truyền thống giống như ở hải ngoại chúng ta trương cờ Vàng các bà hay cuốn khăn đeo cổ, mặc áo dài thêu cờ vàng và các cựu quân nhân thường mặc quân phục VNCH. Thật là những điểm tương đồng hiếm hoi cuả những người bảo thủ không chiụ khuất phục kẻ thắng trận và truyền thống này lưu truyền cho đến đời con cháu trên xứ người.
The Brazilian Town Where the American Confederacy Lives On
By Mimi Dwyer
Gomes had joined some 2,000 Brazilians at the annual festa of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, the brotherhood of Confederate descendants in Brazil, on a plot near the town of Americana, which was settled by Southern defectors 150 years ago. The graveyard is usually empty save for its caretaker or the odd worshipper drawn to its little brick chapel. On the April morning of the festa, a public-address system blaring the Confederate battle song "Stonewall Jackson's Way" had interrupted the cemetery's silence. Brazilians in ten-gallon hats and leather jackets called out greetings.
For miles around the graveyard, unfiltered sun beat down on sugarcane fields planted by the thousands of Confederates who had rejected Reconstruction and fled the United States in the wake of the Civil War—a voluntary exile that American history has more or less erased. Their scattered diaspora has gathered annually for the past 25 years. The party they throw, which receives funding from the local government, is the family reunion of the Confederados, one of the last remaining enclaves of the children of the unreconstructed South.
Brazilians filed past a Rebel-flag banner emblazoned with the Southern maxim: heritage, not hate. They lined up at a booth where they traded Brazilian reals for the festa's legal tender, printout Confederate $1 bills. (The exchange rate was 1:1—the Southern economy had apparently survived.) Kids flocked to the trampoline and moon bounce. Old-timers staked out shade beneath white tents. Early on, the line for fried chicken grew almost too long to brave.
Under a tent, I picked at some chicken and watched a young blond Brazilian woman maneuver an enormous Confederate-flag hoop skirt into a chair. I wondered what she made of the symbol. She introduced herself as Beatrice Stopa, a reporter for Glamour Brazil. Her grandmother, Rose May Dodson, ran the Confederado fraternity. She'd been dancing at the festa since she was a kid.
I asked if she knew there was a connection between slavery and the American South. "I've never heard that before," she said. She wasn't sure why her ancestors had left the States. "I know they came. I don't really know the reason," she said. "Is it because of racism?" She smiled, embarrassed. "Don't tell my grandmother!"
http://www.vice.com/read/welcome-to-americana-brazil-0000580-v22n2
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