Agostinho Neto
Agostinho Neto
Political and party leadership
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)
1922–1979
○ Pancreatic cancer; hepatitis (liver cancer also)
1922–1979
○ Pancreatic cancer; hepatitis (liver cancer also)
Physician-poet who led Angola's liberation struggle and became its first president
"Our land, our mother / we shall return." Lines from the poem "Havemos de voltar" in the 1974 collection Sacred Hope (Sagrada Esperança).
Physician and poet who led Angola's independence struggle. He was president of the MPLA at its founding in December 1956 and, after imprisonment and exile, was elected its effective chairman at the December 1962 conference, leading the independence war until 1974. He became the first president of the People's Republic of Angola on 11 November 1975, building a one-party socialist state in close alignment with the USSR and Cuba while crushing a 1977 coup attempt and carrying out mass purges.
Career timeline
- 1947Left for Portugal; studied medicine at Coimbra and Lisbon universities while joining anti-colonial student activism
- 1956Became the MPLA's president at its founding (Viriato da Cruz was secretary-general)
- 1960–1962Arrested by the PIDE, imprisoned in Lisbon; escaped in 1962 and went into exile in Congo-Léopoldville
- 1962–1974Elected effective chairman at the MPLA conference; led the independence war and built ties with the USSR, Cuba and Yugoslavia
- 1975Became first president of the People's Republic of Angola on 11 November; declared a socialist course
- 1975–1979Defended the state in civil war with Cuban troops and Soviet aid; suppressed Nito Alves's 1977 coup attempt
- 1977Reorganized the MPLA into the MPLA-Workers' Party, adopting Marxism-Leninism as official doctrine