Tamayo was born in Baracoa, Guantánamo province, into a humble family of Afro-Cuban descent. Orphaned as an infant, he was adopted at age 1 by Rafael Tamayo and Esperanza Méndez. He began working at age 13 as a shoeshine and vegetable vendor and later worked as a carpenter's assistant. He was born on January 29, 1942, in Cuba. During the Cuban Revolution he joined the Association of Young Rebels, a group protesting the Batista regime, and later the Revolutionary Work Youth Brigades. After the Cuban Revolution, he entered the Technical Institute "Rebel Army", completing a course for aviation technicians in December 1960. Wishing to become a fighter pilot, he went on to join the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Between April 1961 and May 1962, Tamayo completed a course in aerial combat with MiG-15s at the Yeysk Higher Air Force School in the Soviet Union, after which he was certified a combat pilot at the age of 19. Later that year, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he flew 20 reconnaissance missions as part of the Playa Girón Brigade of the Cuban Revolutionary Guard. In 1967, Tamayo joined the Communist Party of Cuba and spent the next two years serving with Cuban forces in the Vietnam War, returning in 1969 to study at the Maximo Gomez Basic College of the Revolutionary Armed Forces until 1971. In 1975, he was made Chief of Staff of the Santa Clara Aviation Brigade and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel the following year. In 1978 he was selected to join the Intercosmos program and moved to Star City, Russia for his training as a cosmonaut.
Intercosmos program
Tamayo was selected as part of the Soviet Union's seventh Intercosmos program on March 1, 1978. His backup in the Intercosmos program was fellow Cuban José López Falcón. Tamayo would spend the next two and a half years in training for the mission. Tamayo, along with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, was launched into space aboard Soyuz 38 from Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 18, 1980, at 19:11 UTC. After docking with Salyut 6, Tamayo and Romanenko conducted experiments in an attempt to find what caused space adaptation syndrome, and perhaps even find a cure, and on the crystallisation of sucrose in microgravity, for the benefit of Cuba's sugar industry. The SASexperiment involved wearing special adjustable shoes that placed a load on the arch of the foot for six hours a day. After 124 orbits of the Earth, Tamayo and Romanenko landed from Dzhezkazgan. The landing was risky, as it was at night. Upon his return to Earth he was decorated with the Hero of the Republic of Cuba medal, the first person to be so honored. In Moscow he received the Order of Lenin and was also named a Hero of the Soviet Union.
