![Visitors and performers at Brazil’s ‘Confederate Party,’ held each April in São Paulo state.](https://ibw21.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-1-910x512.jpg)
By Jordan Brasher, The Conversation — The aroma of fried chicken and biscuits roused my appetite as the country sounds of Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash played over the loudspeakers. This might have been a county fair back home in Tennessee, but it wasn’t. I was in a cemetery in rural Brazil, at the “Festa Confederada” – the “Confederate Party” – an annual celebration of southern U.S. heritage held each April in Santa Bárbara…