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Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez was born on the 29th of January 1942 in Guantánamo, into a humble Afro-Cuban family. He began to work from a very young age, becoming the only breadwinner for his family at the age of 13, while studying at the same time. He worked as a shoeshiner, a carpenter's assistant and a newspaper seller. Arnaldo Tamayo said :"Since childhood, I dreamed of flying, of being a military pilot."

During the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez participated in several student demonstrations in protest against the dictator who had turned Cuba into a United-States dominated country and whose economy and political sectors were plagued by the mafia. Cuba's economic sectors were largely in the hands of American multinationals. To ensure control of Cuba, the United States supported a corrupt ruling class linked to the mafia.

Tobacco and sugar, the main sources of income, were in the hands of monopolists, mainly American. Cuban workers were starving and did not have a single piece of land to cultivate. They had borrow money from loan sharks. There were no schools or teachers for the majority of Cuba's 6 million people.

After the start of the Cuban Revolution, in 1953, Arnaldo Tamayo entered in January 1959 the "Rebel Army" Technical Institute and after that the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, F.A.R., in spanish)

He became a fighter pilot and trained to become a MiG-15 fighter pilot in the Soviet Union at just 19 years old. MiG-15 were produced in the U.S.S.R. and several communist block countries used them during conflicts but also for training.

In April 1961, two events happened a few days apart :

On the 12th April, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space

Between the 17th and 19th, C.I.A. and U.S.-backed Cuban exiles attempted a military invasion of Cuba which was successfully stopped by the Cuban army.

Arnaldo Tamayo took part in the combats against the C.I.A. mercenaries who had invaded Cuba. But a week before that victory, the news of Gagarin's successful flight into the cosmos greatly inspired him. So he was happy when he was later sent in the USSR to study in the Military Aviation School.

On the 24th July 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, arrived in La Havana for a visit after his flight. In part of his speech, Yuri Gagarin said a sentence that stuck with Arnaldo Tamayo : "The day will come when a son of the Cuban people will also travel to the cosmos."

After his training in the Soviet Union (April 1961-May 1962), he came back to Cuba. In October 1962, during the Cuban missiles crisis, Tamayo carried out several reconnaissance missions (around 20) in the Cuban sky with the aim to intercept enemy aircraft. As the two powers come to an agreement, the Americans promise Moscow that they will not attack Cuba. So it is now possible for Arnaldo Tamayo to continue his studies. He applies to the Antonio Maceo Grajales Higher School of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, from which he successfully graduates in 1971. During his service in the Cuban Air Force, Arnaldo Tamayo makes countless flights and achieved the rank of first class pilot (Class I) and later become an instructor pilot. In 1975, he was chief of staff of the Santa Clara Aviation Brigade and is promoted in 1976 to lieutenant colonel.

Meanwhile, in 1966, the Intercosmos program (Интеркосмос) was created. It was a Soviet space cooperation program, carried out under the auspices of the USSR Academy of Sciences, among the countries of the socialist bloc, aimed at promoting international cooperation in space for peaceful purposes. The countries participating in this program had all adopted a socialist regime but some pro-Soviet non-aligned countries were included over the years. The program resulted in the development of 26 scientific satellites and the participation in space missions of around fifteen nationals of the co-opted countries.

In the 1970s, the Intercosmos program starts training cosmonauts to send them in space, first in 1978 with the Czechoslovak Vladimír Remek, the first neither Soviet nor American cosmonaut. Cuba then sends Arnaldo Tamayo and his colleague José Armando López Falcón to the USSR to prepare for a space flight.

The applicants had to be experienced pilots with an accident-free record and speak Russian. 600 pilots registered but the number decreased in the as the weeks went by during the tests. Tamayo Méndez and López Falcón traveled to the City of Stars, near Moscow, to train as cosmonauts.

They were paired with Yuri Romanenko (Ю́рий Романе́нко) and Yevgeny Khrunov (Евге́ний Хруно́в) who both went to space once before that. Tamayo and Romanenko were chosen as the main crew while López and Khrunov were their backup crew. They started training in September 1979.

Yuri Romanenko saw Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez as jovial and has said of him : "In Tamayo, the best traits of Cubans are concentrated : the ability to work and perseverance. Plus cordiality, kindness and good humor. And believe me, they are qualities very important for cosmonauts." Arnaldo Tamayo described Yuri Romanenko as part of his family.

After a year, in September 1980, they were ready for their space flight : the "Soyuz 38" mission during which they would stay in Salyut 6, the soviet orbital space station, for several days, to carry out experiments. Finally, on the 18th September 1980, at 22:11 in Moscow and 15:11 in Cuba, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez and Yuri Romanenko took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome (Kazakh SSR). Tamayo was traveling as a research cosmonaut while Romanenko was the commander of the spacecraft.

They were met at the Station by Leonid Popov (Леони́д Попо́в) and Valery Ryumin (Вале́рий Рю́мин), on board from April to October 1980, in light blue on the first picture. Romanenko and Tamayo's stay lasted 7 days and 20 hours, a week they used for their scientific researches.

They studied different brain areas to further understand its electrical activity Another experiment was observing changes of skeletal muscle structure, as well as another on blood circulation, which sought to determine the impact weightlessness has on the human circulatory system. The other researches studied how cell division, immune system, concentrations of antibodies and other proteins and minerals were affected after prolonged exposure to a weightless environment. They also studied the growth of a crystal of sucrose in weightlessness.

They used calibrators developed by the Cuban National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Entertainment. When the researches were completed, Soyuz 38 separated from Salyut-6 on the 25th October. The next day at 15:54, the rescue team welcomed the cosmonauts in Kazakhstan.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, by being the first Latin American, first Afro-descendant and first Spanish speaker in space made history. Fidel Castro said that he "represented Cuba, Latin America, Africa and the Third World in the cosmos". Tamayo, with Romanenko was decorated by Raúl Castro with the first honorary medal of Hero of the Republic of Cuba and the Playa Girón Order. In Moscow, he received the Order of Lenin and was named Hero of the Soviet Union. His colleague had been awarded with these titles as well.

After the space flight, knowing of the sad death of Yuri Gagarin in a plane crash in 1968, Fidel prohibited the Cuban cosmonaut from flying or carrying out training flights in combat aircraft. Despite his love for flying and longing for the cosmos, Tamayo followed the orders.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez is now more known as a public and military leader than as a cosmonaut or a pilot. He became a general, a deputy of the National Assembly of People's Power of the republic and heads the foreign relations directorate of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. He is still close with his colleagues, Soviet and others, especially his partner, the one he considers his "star brother" Yuri Romanenko, despite the distance and even after the fall of the U.S.S.R.. Today, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez also heads the Cuba-Russia Friendship Association.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez expressed it this way: "My luck is similar to that of all the hungry people of my generation, for whom the revolution opened the paths of life. But there is a particularity, I was very lucky, they sent me to study in the Union Soviet, to a military pilot academy, and then... to the City of Stars, where cosmonauts live and study ."

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez emphasizes that the relations between Cuba and the U.S.S.R. have deep important historical roots. The work of thousands of Soviet specialists allowed the small revolutionary island to greatly raise the level of its scientific and technical development. The participation of their engineers and agricultural specialists was a considerable contribution to the industrial development of Cuba. Thousands of Cuban students graduated from higher education centers in the USSR, receiving high-quality professional preparation, like Arnaldo Tamayo did.

Arnaldo Tamayo said that Yuri Gagarin, as a spiritual teacher, had a huge influence on him. "He was and will continue to be my idol. In the difficult moments of life, those that happen to everyone, I remember Gagarin's smile known throughout the world. And the discomfort recedes" Even if there hasn't been any other Cuban or Latin-American cosmonaut, Tamayo Méndez inspired plenty of people with his incredible trajectory of life, like Yuri Gagarin did in his time.

Look at their beautiful smiles !!

After him, several Black astronauts went to space, such as Guion Bluford (in 1983) or Mae Jemison (1992), leading the way for many more.

The 97th cosmonaut, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, has his name written in the History of World Cosmonautics as the first Cuban, first Latin American and the first Afro-descendant person who saw our planet from the Cosmos, representing his homeland and People with glory and honor.