Assimilado

Assimilado or assimilada (if female), literally "assimilated", was a status assigned from the 1910s to the 1960s to those African subjects of the colonial Portuguese Empire who had reached a level of "civilization", according to Portuguese legal standards, that theoretically qualified them for full rights as Portuguese citizens. Portuguese colonizers claimed the goal of their assimilation practices to be the "close union of races of different degrees of civilization that help and support each other loyally"; however, this notion of a "close union" differed from its practical application in the cultural and social spheres of the colonies of Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea.