The event made world history: It was the first-ever launch of a Black, Latin person into space. Brigadier Gen. Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, was a Cuban citizen of African descent, and made the historic flight with Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Romanenko aboard the Soyuz spacecraft.
Born into a poor family in Guantánamo, at the Eastern tip of Cuba, Méndez’s’ upbringing was anything but easy. He was orphaned when he was just a few months old. Although he grew up humbly (his first job was as a street shoe-shine-boy), he always dreamed of flying. From an early age he learnt to fend for himself, taking on odd jobs, including selling vegetables, delivering milk, labouring in a furniture factory, becoming an apprentice carpenter at 13 years old.
In 1950, he joined the Cuban Revolution, and later attended the Association of Young Rebels around 1960. Tamayo flew reconnaissance missions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later moved up the military ranks - positioning him as an ideal cosmonaut candidate.
Méndez was a front-runner in this space-race and went on to beat a Romanian candidate to secure his position on the mission in 1978. It is also believed that Cuba’s President at the time, Fidel Castro backed Méndez to fly the Soviet-Cuban mission. He trained for 1,500 hours over a 2-year period with Romanenko and while in space, he used his time taking part in more than two dozen experiments, one being to cure "space sickness" which affects about half of cosmonauts in space.
Castro commented on Méndez saying,
"It is a symbol that a man from such humble origin has attained such extraordinary success.”
Upon his return, Tamayo Méndez received medals for heroism from both Cuba and the USSR, celebrating the successes of this extraordinary man.
