TRAVEL OF THE MAN TO THE MOON. HOW IT WAS SPREAD IN CUBA.

TRAVEL OF THE MAN TO THE MOON. HOW IT WAS SPREAD IN CUBA.

  I remember the day when the first human beings stepped on the surface of the Moon. They were my 1969 hollydays. My family and I were on our farm in the Philippines, now named Villorrio, where electricity and drinking water had not arrived.

  I, stuck to a Soviet battery radio, tuned to a medium wave station. The VOA or the Voice of America-in those times there was still no Radio or TV Martí-and the Cuban media did not say anything about the event that was approaching although it was widespread throughout the planet and humanity was pending.

  Clear. It was the time of the cold war and the Soviets seemed more advanced in the conquest of outer space.

  I heard in Spanish the very excited speaker connected to NASA who was directing the operation:

  - On July 21, at 02:56 GMT, Commander Neil Armstrong descended the Eagle ladder and stepped on the lunar surface, pronouncing one of the best known phrases in history. The world embraced excitedly in front of the television screens and the radio transistors, because he felt that feat as his.

  I ran to tell my parents that they were in the kitchen that Man had reached the moon.

  -First God put his foot there. I do not see where the Greater is- said Dad indifferent.

  But I was excited. It seemed like something great to me and I ran through the countryside to break the news to my two older brothers. They continued in their tasks as if the news was just another one of my fertile imagination.Cuban 

  Television I believe gave the news laconiamente and without further explanations.

  Armstrong became the first human being to step on the moon and said: "That is a small step for man, a great leap for humanity."

  That phrase, still the most famous of science and man, still thrills me.

  Several years later, the Cuban humorous weekly PA'LANTE published on its front page a full-color cartoon of the Soviet Robot Lunajov, throwing one of its appendices powder to the two American cosmonauts, thus ridiculing the feat as if the machine could replace the human species. So, belatedly, they made fun of the human moon landing on our satellite.

  NASA placed a commemorative plaque on the landing gear of the Eagle, Fifty years later, at that point of the Sea of Tranquility, some words continue to remember the universal dimension of what for many is the greatest adventure of all time:

   "Here Men of the planet Earth put their foot on the Moon for the first time. In July of 1969. We came in peace for all of humanity"

   "Those three travelers were wrapped in the flag of the United States, but they represented the entire world. They belonged to an old lineage of navigators; Intrepid explorers who one day left Africa for no other reason than to always go further, and did not stop until they colonized the entire planet. They crossed narrows, climbed mountains, entered jungles, challenged the poles and learned to decipher the secrets of the seas. Now, they returned after conquering the most desired horizon: that of the stars.

             Orlando Vicente Alvarez