ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand how a colonial historical reality – the Cela colonial settlement – is addressed today, in the Angolan official discourse, as a “progressive” scenario and as an exemplary experience in agricultural development and community models. In this case, the official reference is the mochav, Israeli settlement model. To ensure the settlement and later “reproduction” of the white colonists, a type of colonization based in the family had to be implemented, guaranteeing the presence of women, who rarely emigrated to the African colonies. The Organic Statute of the Colonization Services observed that “the action unit, from the social point of view, of the Colonization Services is the family”. Architect Fernando Batalha designed the plan of Cela within the Colonial Public Works Department, headquartered in Lisbon. The continuing problems of electric energy shortage, a remainder of the colonial period, help the occupation of the rural zone by the population, which continues to try its luck in the cities.
