Costa Andrade's tales, one documentary portrait of rural central plateau

Abstract

The study of documents that provide data and describe facts reporting the rural redevelopment process in the 60s in Angola allows for the establishment of connections that are likely to endorse the historical dimension of Estórias de contratados, by Costa Andrade.
In late 1967, the General Government of the Province of Angola instructed the Board of Settlement to monitor the operations of rural reordering of populations, transferring them to selected agricultural areas and seating them in controlled villages (regroupment camps). The Central Plateau, specifically the town of Bailundo (Huambo district), offered favorable conditions for an initial experience for a few reasons: due to the political context, due to its geographical position, for being a mainly agricultural region and for being the most populated one.
Estórias de contratados textualizes the populations’ emigration process: either forced by the colonial administration, or voluntarily, given their demand for lands to cultivate. From the data that the documents provide, our study describes the meaning of the text in order to understand its historicity.