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'António Agostinho Neto' (September 17, 1922 – September 10, 1979) served as the first President of Angola (1975–1979), leading the Marxist-Leninist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the war for independence and the civil war. His birthday is celebrated as National Heroes Day, a public holiday in Angola.

Contents

Early life

Political career

References

External links

Early life

Born in Catete, Bengo in Angola in 1922, Neto attended high school in Luanda while his father Agostinho Pedro Neto worked as a Methodist pastor. Neto left Angola for Portugal, studying medicine at the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon. PIDE arrested him for his separatist activism in 1951. Amnesty International designated him "Prisoner of the Year" for 1951. In 1958 the government released Neto and he finished his studies, marrying Maria Eugénia da Silva the same day he graduated. He returned to Angola in 1959.^[2]

Political career

In December 1956 the Angolan Communist Party (PCA) merged with the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola (PLUA) to form the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola with Viriato da Cruz, the President of the PCA, as Secretary General and Neto as President.^[3]
The Portuguese colonial establishment arrested Neto on June 8, 1960. His patients and supporters marched for his release from Bengo to Catete, but were stopped when Portuguese soldiers shot at them, killing 30 and wounding 200 in the Massacre of Icolo e Bengo. The Portuguese government exiled Neto to Cape Verde and then imprisoned him in Lisbon. The government, facing international pressure, released him from prison and put him under house arrest. He escaped to Morocco and then moved to Zaire.
In 1962 Neto visited Washington D.C., United States and asked the Kennedy administration for aid in his war with Portugal. The U.S. government turned him down, choosing to instead support Holden Roberto's anti-Communist FNLA.^[4]
Neto met Che Guevara in 1965 and began receiving support from Cuba.^[5]
He was one of the first members of the MPLA, one of three factions that vied for power after the Portuguese withdrawal from Angola (following the Carnation Revolution), and later led the country after independence on November 11, 1975. His government developed close links with the Soviet Union and other nations in the Eastern bloc and other Communist states. He was succeeded in his capacity as president of the state and MPLA leader by José Eduardo dos Santos.
Neto died in a hospital in Moscow, in the Soviet Union, while undergoing surgery for cancer, and while the Angolan Civil War continued.
The main university in Angola, the Agostinho Neto University, is named after him.
Agostinho Neto was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (1975-76).
A poem by Chinua Achebe entitled ''Agostinho Neto'' is was written in his honor.[1]

References

1. James, W. Martin. ''Historical Dictionary of Angola'', 2004. Page 110.
2. Tvedten, Inge. ''Angola: Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction'', 1997. Page 29-30.
3. ''Africa Year Book and Who's who'', 1977. Pages 238-239.
4. Walker, John Frederick. ''A Certain Curve of Horn: The Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola'', 2004. Page 146-148.
5. Peter Abbott and Manuel Ribeiro Rodrigues. ''Modern African Wars: Angola and Mocambique, 1961-74'', 1988. Page 10.

External links

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