Neto, Agostinho (1922–1979)

Abstract

António Agostinho Neto was an Angolan nationalist leader who fought against Portuguese colonialism and became the first president of the People's Republic of Angola on November 11, 1975. He was born on September 17, 1922, in the village of Kaxikane, Icolo e Bengo, some 40 miles southeast of Luanda, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Angola. His father was a Methodist minister, and his mother was a teacher. He studied at Salvador Correia High School, and from 1944 to 1947 he worked in the Luanda Public Health Service. During this time he befriended Reverend Ralph Dodge, an American Methodist bishop. Through Dodge he gained a scholarship to the University of Coimbra in Portugal to study medicine, and later transferred to Lisbon University Medical School. Neto became an assimilado – that is, one of the tiny minority of colonial Africans and mulattos who were granted Portuguese citizenship on the basis of having been assimilated into Portuguese culture. Even so, he became interested in politics, gaining recognition as a notable nationalist poet and advocate of separatism. His poetry rapidly gained him the attention of writers and literary figures around the world. His first poems were published in book form in Quatro Poemas (Four Poems), published in 1961, followed by Con Occhi Aschiutti (With Dry Eyes) and Sagrada Esperanza (Sacred Hope), published in 1974.