Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Anthropology
First Advisor
Marcos A. Mendoza
Second Advisor
Simone P. Delerme
Third Advisor
Catarina Passidomo
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Following their defeat in the American Civil War, tens of thousands of American Southerners, many of them former Confederates, fled the United States to seek out new homelands in Latin America. Thousands would set their sights on Brazil, encouraged by the promise of arable land and the prospect of a new society in one of the hemisphere’s last slaveholding societies. Though many of these Confederados returned to the United States after Reconstruction, their influential presence in Brazil has remained a persistent factor. This thesis volume will focus on a semiotic struggle over the role of transnational Confederate symbols in the racial and ethnic politics of contemporary Brazil, with attention to the state of São Paulo. Ultimately, this thesis argues that transnational Confederate symbols are employed within the schema of racial democracy in Brazil to depoliticize and marginalize racial and ethnic elements, a process that is countered by activism that recognizes and recenters race within contentious history. The following chapters will explore this role through analysis of contentious history in the museum landscape of São Paulo, digital ethnography to document the annual Confederate Festival, and interviews with local UNEGRO activists. This thesis represents one of the first major works in anthropology on the Confederados since the 1990s and contributes to a growing body of scholarship on transnationality, critical studies of race, and Brazilian studies.
Recommended Citation
Conrad, Maximilian Xavier, "DIXIELAND DO SUL: Brazilian Racial Democracy and the Recontextualization of Transnational Confederate Symbols (Vol. 2)" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2930.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2930