By Emiliano Gullo – @emilianogullo
Editor's Note: Five years after reading this article, originally published on our friends' website NTD.la, we've decided to republish it and make it available to Zonagirante.com readers, with all due permission, so they can once again enjoy this great piece. Thanks to the folks at No Tan Distintos (we hope you'll be back soon to tell your incredible stories).
The first scene is simple; minimal. A solitary cow grazes in a meadow near Holguín, in southern Cuba. A makeshift ranch stands a few meters away. The second incident occurs simultaneously, but on the other side of the Caribbean Sea. Engineers at the Cape Canaveral launch center in Florida, USA, give the go-ahead for the Thor DM-21 rocket to launch a satellite into space. On its way to the stratosphere, something goes wrong, and an explosion thwarts the plans. Part of the rocket ends up crashing onto the cow. "An imperialist attack," Fidel Castro would say. "It'll be a banger," we'll all say, when Indio Solari and Skay Beilinson write a song together. The outlandish story was not only true, but it even cost the Dwight Eisenhower administration $2 million.
“I was looking at the sky just in time, I was looking just in time, oh oh oh oh”; Solari starts in That lonely cow, included on the album A Baión for the idiot's eye, from 1988. Regarding the lyrics of the song, Indio would explain years later, enigmatically: «"I have no right to shatter the dreams of those who see in these lyrics the Cuban revolution or anything like that; it would be the same as if a painter were to explain how to look at one of his paintings.". However, there is a consensus that the inspiring muse was this true story, which happened a long time ago. It was precisely on Wednesday, November 30, 1960. The Cuban Revolution was just about to celebrate its first anniversary. Washington was already preparing its overthrow, which they would attempt five months later with the Bay of Pigs invasion. Los Redondos weren't wrong when they said, "Civilization loved it.". On the island, cows are as sacred as Catholicism is in Rome.
As soon as I learned of the episode -who, in addition to killing the animal, destroyed the nearby ranchFidel Castro denounced it internationally as an attack by imperialism, reported United Press International (UPI) from Havana. “"President Castro's government blamed the United States for planning a tremendous plot against Cuba.". The cable—reproduced in several newspapers of the time—later added that “The Castro regime would leave the rocket fragments in the hands of Soviet experts.”.
Fidel Castro blamed the United States for planning a tremendous plot against Cuba
But of course, it didn't all end with the young Fidel's rhetoric. A week after the attack, then, About 250 people marched to the United States embassy in Havana. Dressed as cows and carrying anti-American banners, the Cubans demonstrated –in its face– that the episode was far from being considered a sad anecdote. The revolution would not let it pass.
Finally, after mutual accusations and at the very start of the space race with Russia, The US government agreed to settle the matter with a $2 million settlement payment. With the incident closed, the revolutionary leaders ordered a state funeral for the cow killed by imperialism.
«"I was looking at the sky just in time,
I was looking at the sky just in time, oh oh oh oh…
it jumped from the eternal engine,
He jumped from the eternal engine and just in time…
That lonely cow, that lonely Cuban cow…
The whistling of the wind echoed,
The whistling of the wind echoed, ay ay ay ay…
Civilization loved her,
Civilization loved her, and just in time…
That lonely cow, that lonely Cuban cow...»
