Assimilado
An Assimilado is a member of a native ethnic group or Mestiço ( Portuguese for "mongrel" ) in the Portuguese overseas provinces , who was viewed as successfully assimilated by the Portuguese colonial authorities through the adoption of the Portuguese language and culture and the fulfillment of other criteria . Assimilado status included some privileges over non-assimilated native status. The idea behind it was that of so-called lusotropicalism, an ideology that assumed that Portuguese colonialism was morally superior to the rest of colonialism .
conditions
The following criteria had to be met in order to be granted the status of Assimilado:
- Acceptance of European culture and abandonment of African customs and traditions,
- fluent command of the Portuguese language, both spoken and written (a requirement that the majority of Portuguese living in the colonies did not meet until the 1970s ),
- Proof that you can earn your own living through your own gainful employment or work and
- Fulfillment of military service .
- Acceptance of the Catholic faith and abandonment of one's own religion
Legal consequences
Persons to whom this status was finally granted were in principle equated in their rights and obligations to Portuguese citizens . They were exempt from the burdens of the “natives” (port. Indígenas), such as forced labor . The status of the assimilado and its legal consequences were formally abolished in 1961 .
meaning
Due to the poor economic situation in the Portuguese colonies and the lack of educational facilities for black Africans, in 1960 only about 5,000 of the 6 million Mozambicans were assimilados, of the 5 million Angolans only about 30,000 assimilados and in Portuguese Guinea only 1,478 were African this status. In practice, the equality of the Assimilados with the Portuguese was of little importance with regard to civil rights , since both the mother country and the Portuguese overseas territories were ruled in an authoritarian manner by the Salazar dictatorship and political activities were largely prevented by the police organization PIDE . Since independence, people from the group of Assimilados have established themselves in the leading elite of the countries.
rating
If a local could meet the above conditions, he became - upon application - an assimilado. Only then was he a “civilized person”, a member of the “civilized population” (Portuguese: “populaçao civilizada”). People of white descent automatically belonged to this category.
literature
- BTG Chidzero: African Nationalism in East and Central Africa , in: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 36, No. 4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 464-475, here in particular: p. 468 f.
- Christian Mährdel (ed.): History of Africa. Volume 3, Berlin 1983
Individual evidence
- ^ Heywood, Linda: Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present , pp. 55 & 102, University of Rochester Press, 2000, Rochester. ISBN 1-58046-063-1 .
- ↑ At the time, however, the educational opportunities in motherland Portugal were no better.