Havana-. Located in this capital, the Casa de las Américas today commemorates more than six decades of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight, which began on April 12, 1961.
On its Twitter profile, the Caribbean state’s cultural institution recommended reading the Gagarin play. I See The Earth by Argentine playwright Gustavo Schwartz, based on texts from the biography of the national hero and symbol of the Soviet Union.
The story refers to the fact that on November 3, 1957, the USSR launched the first Sputnik spacecraft with a living being as a passenger: the dog Laika, and two years later Yuri Gagarin was one of the cosmonaut candidates in the space program along with 3,500 volunteers.
The 27-year-old from the Smolensk province was on board the first manned spacecraft “Vostok-1”, which was launched 61 years ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and, according to the then agency TASS, was about to start. he uttered the emblematic phrase: “Let’s go.”
From a cosmic height, using the little-known pseudonym “Cedro”, he said a short time later: “I see the earth perfectly. I am touched. How beautiful it is!’; The feat set three absolute space records: the flight duration of 108 minutes, the height of 327 kilometers and the load of 4,725 kilos.
The Soviet press picked up Gagarin’s interest in Cuba upon his return to the mainland, and so on July 24 of the same year, the feat’s protagonist and leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, embraced under a torrential downpour. on the runway of Havana José Martí International Airport.
Testimonies from the stage show how the main shops and streets of the capital decorated their shop windows with photos of Gagarin and flags and both, after the protocol with the diplomatic corps and military honors was fulfilled, got into the cabriolet of the Cuban Friendship Institute with the peoples .
During his visit to the largest of the Antilles, the Soviet hero, in exchange with students from the University of Havana, met the wounded of the Bay of Pigs invasion, a military operation organized by Cuban counter-revolutionaries and armed and trained by the United States government. in April 1961.
Days later, in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana, at the act of commemoration of the VIII anniversary of the attacks on the Moncada barracks and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, then-President Osvaldo Dorticós announced that the Traveler to Cosmos would receive the Order of the Beach Giron.
After announcing his words of thanks, Yuri Gagarin expressed his wish, which was extended to many foresighters: “I am sure that the time is not far off when Cuban cosmonauts, the glorious sons of the Cuban people, will fly into the cosmos to to contribute to the progress of mankind”.