Neto, (Antônio) Agostinho

(born Sept. 17, 1922, Icolo e Bengo, Angola—died Sept. 10, 1979, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Poet, physician, and first president of Angola. In 1948 Neto joined a movement aimed at rediscovering indigenous Angolan culture. He studied medicine in Lisbon and returned to Angola in 1959 as a doctor. In 1960 he was arrested in the presence of his patients by colonial authorities, who opened fire when the patients protested. He was imprisoned in Portugal for two years before escaping to join the Marxist Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), whose president he became in 1962. When Angola became independent in 1975, he was proclaimed president, though he never controlled all the country's territory (see Jonas M. Savimbi). His poems were widely recognized in the Portuguese-speaking world.

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