Brazilians recall Confederate past

AMERICANA, Brazil The shaded benches in the small cemetery on ahillside near the prosperous provincial town of Americana were stillin slight disarray, and the strings that had tethered balloons stillhung from the fig tree.

"It was a mighty fine do," said Allison Jones, a member of theFraternity of American Descendants. "It was our annual picnic. Ourgirls dressed up in hoop skirts to dance the Virginia reel, and wehad corn grits and chicken and biscuits, like we always do."

Jones is descended from one of the 270 American families fromthe Deep South who emigrated to Brazil in the 1860s soon after theCivil War.Rather than endure the devastation of the South, they …