Editing Agostinho Neto (section)

==Early life==
Neto was born at [[Ícolo e Bengo]], in [[Bengo (province)|Bengo Province]], [[Portuguese West Africa|Angola]], in 1922. Neto attended high school in the capital city, [[Luanda]]; his parents were both school teachers and Methodists; his father, also called Agostinho Neto, was a [[Methodist]] pastor. After secondary school he worked in the colonial health services, before going on to university. The younger Neto left Angola for [[Portugal]], and studied medicine at the universities of [[University of Coimbra|Coimbra]] and [[University of Lisbon|Lisbon]]. He combined his academic life with covert political activity of a revolutionary sort; and [[PIDE]], the security police force of the [[Estado Novo (Portugal)|Estado Novo]] regime headed by Portuguese Prime Minister [[António de Oliveira Salazar|Salazar]], arrested him in 1951 for three months for his separatist activism. He was arrested again in 1952 for joining the Portuguese Movement for Democratic Youth Unity. He was arrested again in 1955 and held until 1957. He finished his studies, marrying a 23-year-old Portuguese woman who was born in [[Trás-os-Montes (region)|Trás-os-Montes]], [[Maria Eugénia da Silva]], the same day he graduated. He returned to Angola in 1959, was arrested again in 1960, and escaped to assume leadership of the armed struggle against colonial rule. When Angola gained independence in 1975 he became president and held the position until his death in 1979.<ref name="marriage"/><ref name="struggle">{{cite book|last=Tvedten|first=Inge|year=1997|title=Angola: Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction|url=https://archive.org/details/angolastrugglefo00tved|url-access=registration|pages=[https://archive.org/details/angolastrugglefo00tved/page/29 29–30]}}</ref>