Messages on the Moon from a world turned upside down

The peace messages of the leaders of the nations under the Soviet occupation in exile were poignant. Anatols Dinbergs from Latvia explained how the moon landing would contribute to "restoring the freedom of all nations".

But the words of dictators allied with the United States have been much less principled. Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China) and Park Chung-hee (South Korea), who freely used torture and murder to maintain control, were presumed to speak for their captive populations in high platitudes, citing " "world utopia" and "justice, freedom and unity" with little irony.

However, a totalitarian leader sometimes betrayed his nature, as when Joseph-Desire Mobutu of Congo (before being known as Mobutu Sese Seko) claimed the mission of the Apollo 11 astronauts as his own. , which he described as "the conquest of space in order to make man his master. "(The current use of the metaphor of conquest for a peace mission seemed to strike few discords with rulers at the time.)

Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz turned to history to take valuable lessons for the occasion. "In 1492, the discovery of the American continent transformed the geography and the course of human events," he said, then drew a parallel between this event and the "conquest of the ultra-terrestrial space." It is disturbing, to say the least, to see the tens of millions of inhabitants of pre-Columbian America and their ancient civilizations erased to justify a comparison with the lifeless moon. Not only would future images of the Earth be distorted, but so is history.

(Speaking of people on the moon, Liberian President William V. Tubman hypothesized, asking astronauts "to pass on this message to the inhabitants of the Moon if they find it".)

Today, these messages, often eloquent and inspiring, but also selfish, narcotic, myopic and outdated, remind us of how difficult it is to unravel the messy present of the ambitious future, to separate the realization of the potential of the human mind. of the need to appease less noble motives.