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Nuclear Weapons and New Mexico’s Downwinders: Tina Cordova on “the legacy for us that no one ever talks about”

NTI 18 Oct 23 Mary Olney Fulham, Communications Officer, Rachel Staley GrantDeputy Vice President, Communications

Tina Cordova is co-founder and executive director of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. Since its founding in 2005, the Consortium has brought attention to the serious health effects that New Mexicans have suffered due to the development and testing of nuclear weapons in the state. NTI’s Mary Fulham and Rachel Staley Grant interviewed Tina during Hispanic American Heritage Month about her advocacy work—including recent breakthroughs in Congress—and her take on the recent attention that Oppenheimer has brought to the history of nuclear weapons in New Mexico.

Thank you for joining us, Tina. To get started, could you tell us about New Mexico’s experience with nuclear weapons and how nuclear weapons have made a mark on your life?

I grew up in a small village close to the Trinity test site. When I was young, I heard about the bomb detonated in our backyard, and I saw people with rare and aggressive cancers. When I went to college and got a degree in the sciences, I really began to understand how the health, economy, and environment of the entire state is horribly harmed by the nuclear industry.

We have the “cradle-to-grave” nuclear weapons lifecycle here: mining, testing, disposal. From the beginning of the Manhattan Project, the government disrespected and exploited native communities by building mines on sacred lands and forcing the people to work in and around the mines without safety gear. Well into the 1970s, Los Alamos National Lab dumped nuclear waste in the nearby canyons that feed the aquifer connected to the Rio Grande River, our water source. Everything south of Los Alamos was contaminated by that waste.

As a result, many people are sick from radiation exposure, which is both a health and economic issue. When people get sick with cancer they can’t hold a job.

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 39. My dad developed cancer after me, first on the base of his tongue, then prostate cancer, and then, eight years later, again on his tongue. He was healthy and had no risk factors, but the doctors said they see it a lot in New Mexico. After the second round of cancer, my dad had all the radiation treatment he could take, so he died. Both of my grandmothers had cancer and I had two great-grandfathers that had cancer. Now my 23-year-old niece has thyroid cancer.

That’s cancer in five generations of my family.

 I wish I could say we were unique, but we’ve documented hundreds of families with the same experience, and the really tragic thing is that we’re seeing cancer in younger people all the time. We are forced to bury our loved ones on a regular basis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

New Mexicans did the dirty work for the Manhattan Project. We built the roads, the bridges, the facilities. We were the ones who died in explosive accidents  at Los Alamos and the janitors who cleaned up. Our women were bussed up there and cooked every meal, cleaned every house, changed every diaper, and fed every baby. We lived as close as 12 miles to the Trinity site. None of that is shown in the movie.

This movie[LOppenheimer] will make hundreds of millions of dollars and have millions of views, and they wouldn’t even include a note at the end of the film acknowledging the sacrifice and suffering of New Mexicans as a result of the Manhattan Project. And for me, that’s just more of the same exploitation…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

It makes me worried that, as we’re looking at a nuclear arms race right now, people don’t realize the human devastation that’s associated with these weapons. People need to recognize the nuclear legacy that so many Americans are already living with, and why it’s not sustainable to keep ramping up our nuclear arsenal and think that somehow it will lead to a good outcome.  https://www.nti.org/atomic-pulse/nuclear-weapons-and-new-mexicos-downwinders-tina-cordova-on-the-legacy-for-us-that-no-one-ever-talks-about/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

October 19, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, USA