Getting it straight II

 It is hard for the inhabitants of Santarem to talk about the city without mentioning the confederados. They made history in Santarem and still do!
Some hundreds of families were brought here by Hasting known for the Donner Party. He was encouraged by the Brazilian(portuguese) royal family that had slave breeding colonies.

The fact is that the confederates who moved to Santarem gave up slavery and only a few families ended up having them. Taperinha was one of the farms slaves were working as slaves.

The confederates became friends and did business with my grand father Julio Serique, they were friends of my father Flavio Serique. My grand-mother is burried by Dave Rikers first wife at Fordlandia, I live in a property owned previously by the Waughon family, Flora's last birthday gift was bought from the Hennington''s and my best friend is a Jennings.

For us it is a lot more a story of love and no hate at all. We are not that stupid and at the worst a lot of us saw Tarantino's, if did not read a thick book about the American Civil war.

I am often lazy to write below the pictures I post on facebook. One day I had a group picture (cruiseship passengers) with a confederate flag after after talking about it. It was not a joke, but it was a fun thing to do, the fact is that the picture was taken, posted  and created got some confusion between me and a friend.

Just to clearify that friend on the left descends from a family of slaves. He passed away a few years ago. Benedito was his name. He did not know the meaning of the flag.

The fun part is what took me to get the flag....

I like using props in my tours, it is an effective to way to educate and stamp messages on people's mind. We used them as well during our English classes at my brothers school.

I have fish skulls to talk about the fish fauna, books, masks you name it.

The prop I wanted now was a confederate flag and I ended up being very surprised to know how difficult was to get one.

My first try was a friend from the USA. He did not even responded my email and he is a real friend.
My second attempt was a friend from Canada, he lives in the USA. I went to E-bay and sent him a link (he was coming a week later to visit me). His answer was....- Gil, If I buy that flag with my credit card, on the next day CIA and FBI together will be knocking on my door.

I finally got it from Bryan, ( an English friend I had for over 30 years, I think he is dead now) who sent it to me without posting the sender address.

It is clear now!

It is all about friends and History