Confederate flags still fly in Brazil

In 2015 the Guardian published a story about the Confederate flags ignorantly flying in Brazil.

Many American slaveholders moved there after losing their Civil War in 1865 because… it was still legal to own slaves and land was being appropriated and granted to white settlers

Most were lured by newspaper ads placed in the wake of the war by the government of Brazil’s then emperor, Dom Pedro II, promising land grants to those who would help colonise the South American country’s vast and little-explored interior.

Brazil used the harsh “pro-life” system of slavery that turned black women into birthing machines, rather than extend life by providing humane work conditions. The brutality of white power economics meant life was extremely short and brutal for non-whites.

They worked on average from 6am to 10pm, almost without rest, and aged very quickly. At 35, they already had white hair and no teeth.

That’s why you see such huge volumes of slavery transit (nearly 40%) directed into Brazil.

Source: SlaveVoyages.org. David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven, 2010), reproduced with the permission of Yale University Press.

American slaveholders directly contributed to perpetuating these slavery practices in Brazil after losing their war at home, ensuring it would be the last country in the world to abolish officially May 13, 1888.

A BBC documentary in 2012 called this “an inconvenient history”, where historians and anthropologists explain how Confederate flags are just a tiny part of how modern Brazil isn’t addressing its slavery past:

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