Lynyrd Skynyrd medleys, mile-long lines for fried chicken, barbeque and draft beer, and a plethora of Confederate flags emblazoning everything from belt buckles to motorcycle vests to trucker caps. [...] Sunday's party marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War took about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) south of the South, in a rural Brazilian town colonized by families fleeing Reconstruction. For many of the residents of Santa Barbara d'Oeste and neighboring Americana in Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state, having Confederate ancestry is a point of pride that's celebrated in high style at the annual "Festa dos Confederados," or "Confederates Party" in Portuguese. The party takes place up a dusty dirt road flanked on both sides by sugarcane plantations, in a field that abuts on the "Cemiterio dos Americanos," or "American Cemetery," which began as the resting place of the wife and two daughters of one of the first Confederados and still serves their descendants today. Teenage girls pulled hoop skirts over their cut-off short-shorts and wiggled into bustier tops, taking to the stage painted with a giant Confederate flag on the arms of young men in grey and yellow Johnny Reb uniforms. 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 colonize the South American country's vast and little-explored interior.