State Secret | Translation

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Translated by MC Editorial

[Daniel Alarcón]:  This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón. 

Today we begin in northern New Mexico, United States, on a plateau called Pajarito. A very large territory, with deserts and forests, more than two thousand meters above sea level, crossed by very deep canyons. There are kilometers of flat land, brown, yellow and green, with large trees of different types and bushes similar to the tumbleweeds in cowboy movies.

This part of the country was first an indigenous, Native American territory. Then, a Spanish territory. Then, part of Mexico. And finally, it was bought by the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. That is why it is a very ethnically diverse state, where language became a way of telling people apart. There have been, and continue to be, those who speak Tewa, Apache, Navajo, English, Spanish. The latter and their descendants call themselves Hispanics.

And in the 40s, the Pajarito Plateau was inhabited by about 36 families who were, for the most part, Hispanic. One of them was Yvonne Montoya’s.

[Yvonne Montoya]: One of my great-great-grandfathers had a farm there. He had a two-story house and horses, pigs, chickens.

[Daniel]: The farm was 50 hectares, a very large piece of land, but of average size for the locals. In addition to raising animals, they grew beans, wheat and corn, among other things. Some, like Yvonne’s great-great-grandparents, used their land only as farms and had their homes in the valleys below. Others, however, lived on the plateau all year round. Their main concerns were finding water, dealing with the altitude, and taming the land, but otherwise they lived peacefully. Until 1943, when many of them began to receive unexpected visitors…

[Yvonne]: People in uniform arrived. Army or military police with guns.

And they said, “You have to leave now. And you can’t go back. You can’t go back for your cattle. You can’t go back for your food.” People were very confused. Because they didn’t speak English, and the military didn’t speak Spanish. So it was confusing.

[Daniel]:  But faced with uniformed men with guns, the people of the plateau could do nothing but obey. There was no way to resist.

[Yvonne]: My great-great-grandparents’ neighbor had to be taken by force because he refused; he refused to leave. “Why? It’s my… it’s my home.” 

[Daniel]: So the residents of Pajarito gathered up everything they could carry in their arms or in wheelbarrows. And they ended up leaving the place where they had lived for generations. 

[Yvonne]: At the time, there was no road. They had to navigate huge rocks. It was a difficult climb. And they were crying. The women, the children crying. They didn’t know what was happening. I imagine they were scared. I imagine they were angry. 

[Daniel]: That’s how a community with 80 years of history was destroyed. For the residents of Pajarito, it was a tragedy that had no explanation. But something even more cruel was to come. Although their lands never belonged to them again, a few months later, the same people who had expelled them ended up calling them back. This time, as workers.

[Yvonne]: And according to the stories, people came there to work, crying because they had to work in what was once their homes. Crying because they remembered what happened and what they had lost.

[Daniel]: And these prior settlers would end up building, right there, what would become the facilities of a top-secret project… a project that, without exaggeration, would change the history of humanity.

We’ll be right back.

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Journalist Natalia Sánchez Loayza brings us this story.

[Natalia Sánchez Loayza]: In March 2024, I headed to the Pajarito Plateau. I went with Alicia Romero.

[Alicia Romero]: For me, it’s like the first time, too…

[Natalia]: The first time you come?

[Alicia]: Well, earlier with my grandfather, with my mother, but over 20 years ago, now to do this. 

[Natalia]: Alicia is a historian and curator at the Albuquerque Museum, in the largest city in New Mexico. She says she hasn’t visited the Pajarito Plateau for more than 20 years. Her grandparents were some of the Hispanics who worked to build that top-secret project.

For months, they were taken to work on buses every morning. They had to show an entry permit at a booth that has now been rebuilt at the same spot where it always was. As we were about to arrive, Alicia pointed it out to me. 

[Alicia]: National Security Site. Main Gate Park. Historic Visitor Center. Oh, look, there it is. 

[Natalia]: Wow. 

We got off right there.

And we walked over. It’s a little bigger than a normal booth. A small, white, one-room cabin. Today it has a very large sign on top, also white, with black letters, that says, “Los Alamos Project Main Gate.”

It’s no longer in operation, and it’s maintained only as a tourist attraction. When we walked in, I saw some informational brochures. One caught my eye.

This is from… It must be from… from the families that lived here.

[Alicia]: Uh-huh.

[Natalia]:  It was in English and advertised a tour of the historic farms. I opened it and read through it quickly, trying to find out more about who had lived there before the project. But instead, I found something else. 

[Natalia]: There is a golf course?

[Alicia]: Yes, sure, they have tons of money here.

[Natalia]: The brochure had a map and showed where the golf course was, and the tennis court, a park, a cemetery, a parking lot… I put the brochure in my pocket along with others, and we went back to the car.

I continued reading it. It mentioned only three Hispanic families from the plateau, but nowhere did it mention how they were expelled along with the others. Instead, it said something else. I read it to Alicia.

Let’s see, it says, “Homestead life in the plateau was abruptly terminated…”

[Alicia]: Oh.

[Natalia]: “As was the ranch school in late 1942, when the Army chose Los Alamos as a site for the Manhattan Project.” 

[Natalia]:  It said that the daily life of the farmers on that plateau had terminated abruptly in late 1942, when the army chose Los Alamos as the site for the Manhattan Project, the top-secret project to create the first nuclear bomb.

So, here’s a little history: In 1938, two German scientists discovered nuclear fission. This is basically a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into nuclei of lighter atoms. If this reaction occurs in an uncontrolled chain, it can release of a lot of energy. 

The following year, when World War II officially broke out, a Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard, identified that this nuclear fission could be used to create weapons. Very powerful weapons, atomic weapons—weapons that humanity had never seen.

So, worried, he wrote a letter to the American president warning him that Nazi Germany could build an extremely powerful bomb that could help them win the war in the blink of an eye. The physicist gave this letter to his colleague, Albert Einstein, and asked him to sign it in his name and send it.

Einstein sent the warning. The government heeded this warning and assumed, then, that the only way to counteract the danger was for the United States to develop this powerful weapon before the Nazis. Other powers came to the same conclusion and began, that same year, a top-secret and frantic nuclear race to get there first. 

In 1942, when the United States had become officially involved in the war, the government founded what you have already heard, what they called the Manhattan Project. Its only objective was to develop the bomb. At the end of that year, at the University of Chicago, the project scientists created the first artificial, controlled and self-sustaining nuclear fission, on a very small scale, using the radioactive element uranium. So they proved that this fission could produce energy and a very powerful explosion if, eventually, they managed to do it with a chain reaction in a very short time. That is, they confirmed that an atomic bomb could be technically possible. Now all that remained was to make it.

But this was nothing like building a bridge or assembling a ship. It required the construction of several massive industrial complexes that did not exist at the time. And this task—and, in fact, the entire Manhattan Project—was under the command of an Army general named Leslie Groves.  

[Archive soundbite]

[Leslie Groves]: My understanding at the time of my appointment that it was ready for me to draw up the detailed construction plans and to start construction. That was the surprise to me. 

[Natalia]:  This is Groves in a 1965 interview in which he says that, when he was assigned the project, he thought that everything was ready to draw up the blueprints and begin construction. But in reality, less progress had been made than he thought. They didn’t even know where they would do it, so their first mission was to find three ideal locations. In one, a uranium enrichment and processing plant would be built; in the second, a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium, another radioactive material; and in the third, a laboratory where the scientists could build the bomb.

For the last, and most important, Groves had special requirements in mind: 

[Archive soundbite]

[Groves]: It should have good transportation.

[Natalia]:  For one thing, it had to be easily accessible by air and rail. For another…

[Archive soundbite]

[Groves]: It should be out in an area where you could have outdoor experiments year round, and outdoor construction.

[Natalia]: It had to be a place where you could do outdoor experiments and build all year round. And also…

[Archive soundbite]

[Groves]: It should be isolated enough, so if we had any experiments that became dangerous to anybody, we would be off by ourselves, and that any experiments wouldn’t attract the attention of people.

[Natalia]: It had to be isolated enough in case any experiment could endanger people, and also so as not to attract people’s attention.

He also looked for a place that had access to water and available labor. In addition, it had to be as empty as possible. In fact, at least two options had already been ruled out, in the states of Utah and Nevada, because it meant evicting several families and destroying crop areas.

That search took them to New Mexico. And there Groves met the man who would become the most important scientist of the Manhattan Project: Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer had known the area well for many years and even had a ranch there. So he proposed that they could set up the laboratory in the northern part of the state, on the Pajarito Plateau.

Oppenheimer told Groves that there was a school on the plateau called Los Alamos, which belonged to a small group of white Americans. It was a school for rich children who learned how to live in the countryside.

So Groves, Oppenheimer, and the rest of the team headed out to see the land. When the general saw the site, it didn’t take him long to decide that that was the perfect spot. According to him, it checked off a number of boxes. Now he just wanted to know whether it would be easy to acquire the land. He asked Oppenheimer. 

[Archive soundbite]

[Groves]: And he said, well, that he knew that the owner of the school was very anxious to sell it.

[Natalia]: Oppenheimer told him that the owner of the school was eager to sell. This was ideal, since they wouldn’t have to build the first buildings. They would simply use the school and the teachers’ quarters to set up shop. From there, they could begin building the rest of the laboratory, keeping the original name: Los Alamos.

So on November 25, 1942, the government paid more than $300,000 for the property, and the owner was given three months to finish classes, evacuate the children, pack up, and leave.

But, as we know, the school was not the only property on the Pajarito Plateau. Nor were the children and teachers the only residents.

One of the people who has done the most study of the eviction we heard about at the beginning of this story is Myrriah Gómez, also descended from a Hispanic family that once owned property on the plateau. Myrriah is a university professor of New Mexico History. She has interviewed several New Mexicans who lived through that period, as well as their families. And one of the things she told me is that the Pajarito Plateau did not meet almost any of the requirements that General Groves was originally looking for.

[Myrriah Gómez]: It didn’t have an airport. It didn’t have a railroad. It didn’t have enough water. It didn’t have the proper climate to do the work all year round.

[Natalia]: Because in that area and at that altitude, winters were very snowy. This could make outdoor work and experiments difficult or impossible. But more importantly, the plateau was neither empty nor isolated. There were several communities living nearby. And Groves knew it. 

[Myrriah]: There’s a sentence in Groves’s book where he says that they were driving over Indian farms. Indians. I think he had some misgivings, didn’t he? 

[Natalia]:  Myrriah refers to Groves’s autobiography, in which he says that, on that trip with Oppenheimer, he could see—and I quote—“several small Indian farms.” It was then that he began to have misgivings, that is, doubts about his decision, because it might be difficult to evict them. From Groves’s point of view, the Hispanic and Native American peoples in the area were practically the same. But his misgivings did not last long, because he went forward with his plan anyway.

[Myrriah]: They knew there were a lot of people. And the lives of the people who were there would be changed by the project. But they had no problem with that.

[Natalia]: She speaks in the plural, because Oppenheimer knew about them, too. Yvonne, whom we heard at the beginning, is very clear on this point: 

[Yvonne]: Oppenheimer knew about our communities. He was there with my great-great-grandparents. And that’s why it was… it was an intentional decision. 

[Natalia]:  Both she and Myrriah have a theory as to why, despite knowing there were many people living on and around the plateau, they chose it. They say it is precisely because of who those people were. 

[Yvonne]: Oppenheimer chose the Pajarito Plateau because the people there did not speak English.

[Natalia]:  In the 1940s, New Mexico was a predominantly rural, minority white state. Hispanics alone made up more than 40 percent of the population. No other state had such demographics.

This, Myrriah said, provided an ideal type of worker for those running the project.

[Myrriah]: The workers were Mexican, they were indigenous. They didn’t have to be paid much. They didn’t speak much English; they spoke a lot of Spanish and Tewa, and that’s why the government and the scientists thought the people wouldn’t understand much of what was going on, or much of what they were hearing there in Los Alamos.

They could live in silence the whole time they were building the bomb. 

[Natalia]:  Cheap labor. People who could stand on the sidelines, not knowing what was going on, and keep quiet. Even if the pay they were offered wasn’t much, it was something for people who had lost everything. This is Yvonne again:

[Yvonne]: They needed jobs. “Oh, look, there are jobs in the lab. You can come here and build the scientists’ dormitories or clean the house.”

[Natalia]:  They started offering an amount of jobs that was unprecedented in the state and that changed the lives of the residents forever. There was work for those whose land was expropriated, but also for any New Mexican who lived in the surrounding area.

This is what some relatives of Alicia Romero, the historian who took me to Los Alamos, did. In the 1940s, many in her family’s town decided to join this work boom, which for so many—all those who did not know the secret—would become an optimistic time of progress. This is Alicia remembering what her ancestors told her:

[Alicia]: “We can work there. We don’t know what they’re doing, but they have opportunities and they need workers. So let’s apply. Let’s go visit Ms. Dorothy McKibbin.”

[Natalia]:  Dorothy McKibbin, known as the first lady or the door-woman of the lab, was the first person that everyone—scientists, military personnel and their families, and also workers—had to meet to become part of the project. She had her office in Santa Fe, the state capital, and everyone went there to request a work permit.

Hispanic workers were not given many details about what they would do, and did not even sign a contract. McKibbin would just approve their permit and then tell them how they could get to the lab. That permit was what they showed at the white booth that I visited with Alicia. Her grandparents went through that process.  

[Alicia]: So, my grandmother cleaned the… cafeterias. My grandfather worked there as a house painter. 

[Natalia]:  McKibbin gave everyone involved in the project an ID card. These were yellow index cards that she typed. On the cards for scientists or military personnel, she included their name, marital status, date of arrival in New Mexico, salary, address, area they worked for, and job title. And a photograph, too. But the cards for the rank-and-file workers, like Alicia’s grandparents, had much less information. When we talked, she showed me her grandfather’s card. 

[Alicia]: His name was José Herminio Romero. And we can see that it only says, “Romero,” space, “Jose.”

[Natalia]:  Jose. Without an accent. And on the side, in parentheses… 

[Alicia]: “Joe”.

[Natalia]:  “Joe,” in English. 

[Alicia]: Because he must have an English name that could be understood, and that’s Joe. The date when he started working at Los Alamos is October 11, ‘43.

[Natalia]: Alicia also showed me the file with the cards of the scientists and soldiers, and the contrast is striking. Apart from the name and date, the only thing included was that José was “Ryan’s worker.” 

[Alicia]: My grandfather, or people like him, don’t have a photograph. They don’t have a face; they almost don’t have a name. They are not important. For me, it’s an insult. People without a face. But they were there to… to help the project move forward.

[Daniel]: We’ll be right back.

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Journalist Natalia Sánchez Loayza continues the story.

[Natalia]:  Very quickly, they built a secret city composed by the lab, test sites and houses without a postal code, but also shops, schools, cinemas, dance halls, hospitals, and nurseries. It was all surrounded by a fence, and the people who lived inside—the scientists, the military and their families—could not leave without a special permit.

Within that fence, the population grew from those initial 36 families to almost 6 thousand people. The city grew, and so did the number of tests and experiments. 

And if there were negative consequences of all this growth, that was not the most important thing. What mattered was to win the race. The project could not stop for a second. So, just over a year after coming to the plateau, Oppenheimer and other scientists on the project concluded that they had to test a plutonium bomb. A test of a real detonation. They had to observe whether it was effective or not. The basics. Until then, tests had been done only on a minuscule scale.

Groves approved it. But he made it clear to Oppenheimer that they would have only one chance to do it because, among other things, getting enough plutonium was not easy, and neither was organizing the logistics for the detonation. In addition, he asked the team to go to an unpopulated area, and, I quote from his autobiography, “not to be further than necessary from Los Alamos,” although he did not specify how far. Oppenheimer called the test the Trinity Project.

The area they chose is more than 300 kilometers south of the Pajarito Plateau, and I also visited it in March 2024.

This time, the person who accompanied me was Bernice Gutiérrez, who was born 79 years ago in Carrizozo, a town 56 kilometers from there. It is easy to remember her age because her birthday is somewhat special.

[Bernice Gutiérrez]: I was born on July 8, 1945, eight days before the bomb was detonated at Trinity.

[Natalia]: Ever since I met her in person, there was one thing we talked about a lot: the wind. It blows very strong, very fast, and you have to be careful. She warned me that we could only go to Trinity if the weather allowed. If it was very windy, it would be difficult to drive on the road because the car could get out of control. It is that strong. We would have to check the forecast every so often.

But on Saturday night, she confirmed that we could go the next morning, as we had planned. When she and her husband picked me up, it was cold, about seven degrees Celsius, but according to the forecast, the wind would not blow so much in our direction. So off we went. The drive would be an hour and a half.

When we were about 40 km from Trinity, Bernice warned me about something:

[Bernice]: I think this will be our only chance to use the phone, because we get a lot of dead zones.

[Natalia]:  Dead zones, or zones without coverage. That area is still a weapons-testing site run by the army. And that’s why it’s off-limits to visitors except for two days a year, when they still allow entry to the exact spot where the bomb was detonated. So our plan at that point was to get as close as possible.

Bernice had told me that there wasn’t much to see inside anyway, except for one thing:

[Bernice]: They have a structure which says: “This was the place where the first bomb was detonated.”

[Natalia]:  It is an obelisk that marks the exact spot where scientists and the military built a very tall tower to detonate the plutonium bomb. The date set for this was July 16, 1945. And that was despite the fact that the weather forecasts by the meteorologist of the project itself were not the best for that day. It was not just breezy and somewhat cold; it was monsoon season: torrential rains with very strong winds.

But doing the test a few days earlier would have been too early, and doing it just a day later would be too late for political reasons. On July 17, the day after the test, the then-President of the United States was due to attend the Potsdam Conference in Germany, where his allies would decide the fate of Europe.

By that time, Germany had already fallen, so the fear of the Nazis having the bomb no longer existed. Japan was the only one yet to surrender, but the United States did not want the Soviet Union to keep that territory, as had already happened with half of Europe. And the best way to demonstrate its power was to confirm, in Potsdam, that they had the atomic bomb ready.

And so, following orders from above, they set up the 30-meter tower. And on the 16th, at 5:29 in the morning, despite the rain and the lightning that had occurred earlier, the bomb was detonated.

According to the testimonies of the scientists and military personnel who observed the detonation, at first, there was silence. Then, the first thing they saw was a flash so powerful and so huge that it seemed stronger than daylight. Then came a flare that quickly died out and became a very tall pillar of smoke that grew and grew. The famous nuclear mushroom, the one that is now part of our collective imaginary. Twenty-seven seconds later, they heard the explosion.

The energy released produced up to 10,000 times more heat than the Sun. The tower disintegrated and a crater measuring almost 2.5 kilometers in diameter was left on the ground. The earth beneath melted and turned into trinitite, a type of radioactive green glass. The nuclear mushroom penetrated the stratosphere.

And it was not only those involved in the Project who saw the explosion. It was so powerful that, in fact, it could be seen from Texas, over 450 kilometers away.

That same day, various newspapers in the state published the statement of the official in charge of Trinity. He said that it had been an accident, an explosion of a high-power munitions depot, that there were no deaths or injuries, and that the property damage was insignificant. No further details.

Today, it is easy to miss that area, because not much makes it stand out. Fortunately, I was with Bernice and her husband, who pointed out the only thing on the right side of the road that gives a clue to what happened there: a square wooden sign, a little taller than a person. It has just some tiny white letters, and other slightly larger ones. We got out of the car. 

And here I go back to the topic of the wind. If there’s a number one enemy for those of us who work in audio, it’s wind. There is no way to recover or completely clean up a recording that has too much wind in the background. The most natural thing, then, that I would have had to do in this circumstance, given the risk of a lot of wind that day, was to postpone this visit. But this time, it was more important that we listen to it.

I had never heard or felt a wind like that. It came and went forcefully.

[Bernice]: It’s cool. 

[Natalia]:  Quite, quite cool. 

They weren’t exaggerating. It wasn’t even the worst wind that could blow there, and I had a hard time holding the microphone without my hands getting cold. It was hard to keep my eyes open; my hair was flying everywhere. I asked Bernice to read what the sign said. But I couldn’t hear her, and if I hadn’t been wearing the headphones that were connected to my recorder, I wouldn’t have been able to hear myself. The sign says that the Atomic Age began with the detonation of the first atomic bomb at this site on July 16, 1945. It adds that, after the explosion, Oppenheimer is said to have paraphrased a line from a sacred Hindu text that he also quoted in an interview.

[Archive soundbite]

[Oppenheimer]: Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.

[Natalia]:  “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds”.

On the day of the detonation here 79 years ago, most of the radioactive material that made up the bomb rose over 15 kilometers into the air, and then fell in a shower of particles, which looked like snow but were warm, and which the New Mexico wind, this wind, like the one you just heard, spread over the towns near Trinity, such as Bernice’s town.

[Bernice]: The wind blew everywhere. With all this radiation flying in the air. 

[Natalia]:  And it fell on the ground, the water, the plants, the animals, the buildings, and whoever happened to be outdoors at the time. It was summer, and the women in that area used to hang wet sheets on the windows to cool their homes. After the explosion, the houses were peppered with those radioactive particles.

Three weeks after the detonation, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

It was not until the day after Hiroshima that the newspapers in New Mexico finally reported the truth about the explosion at Trinity: that it was not a munitions accident, as they had initially reported, but rather the result of the test that had been conducted. Three days later, on August 9, another bomb, much more destructive, was dropped on Nagasaki. This caused Japan to surrender definitively.

And even though many of those living in southern New Mexico heard about what had happened at Trinity, they didn’t connect the devastation of those two bombs to the explosion so close to home. Nuclear power was something humanity had never experienced. It was new to scientists, but incomprehensible to everyone else.

What was being said about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was nothing like what happened in their state. Thousands of people didn’t die, and entire cities weren’t instantly razed. Everything was still standing, and life seemed to be going on normally for the most part… But things were definitely not going to stay the same. The consequences would come soon. 

[Daniel]: We’ll be back. 

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Natalia continues the story.

[Natalia]: After the detonation in New Mexico, the Military fenced off the site and collected much of the trinitite. They put up signs warning that no one was allowed in because of radiation. But just eight years later, Trinity was opened to the public. School trips were organized to view the exact spot where the explosion had taken place. Family picnics and masses were held. Children would go and play with the trinitite. They would bring home those little bits of radioactive greenish glass and keep them under their beds.

But even when people started getting sick, it never occurred to them that it might be a consequence of the explosion. In Bernice’s family, the person who accompanied me to Trinity, the first member to be diagnosed with cancer was her great-grandfather. 

[Bernice]: He died in 1952 of stomach cancer. One of my mother’s sisters had breast cancer on both sides. Another sister died of bone cancer. Another sister had two kinds of cancer. Every brother and sister of my mother’s who had children has had cancer. And not just one kind of cancer. Some have had two kinds, like that niece who had cancer of the thyroid as well as breast cancer. And others had lung cancer. Others, pancreatic cancer. Different kinds of cancer.

[Natalia]:  And they could not understand what the cause was.

[Bernice]: “Is it something in the air?” “Something we’re eating?” “What’s the reason?” “Where is this cancer coming from?” We had no idea.

[Natalia]: In the late 1990s, Bernice began to notice lumps on her neck. She knew what it meant. Her mother had had thyroid cancer and it had started like this. But it was not until early 2000, at a routine doctor’s appointment, that she was asked something unexpected. 

[Bernice]: And the doctor asked me whether we had ever suffered or encountered radiation. I didn’t know anything. There was no reason why I should know. 

[Natalia]:  Radiation? Bernice had no idea that this phenomenon and cancer were related, nor that this type of cancer, thyroid cancer, was the most common when there is overexposure. What puzzled her most was the question of whether she had been exposed. Bernice studied Sociology and had held different office jobs. Neither her profession nor her life had anything to do with what you imagine when you think of radiation—a nuclear plant, a mine. So she told the doctor that she didn’t know. Anyway, her thyroid was removed some time later to prevent the same thing that happened to her relatives from happening to her.

Bernice never made the connection until one night, in 2014, when she was watching the news on television… 

[Bernice]: And there was Tina Cordova talking, explaining, inviting people to an event about why we are suffering from cancer.

[Natalia]: Tina Cordova was born in 1959 in Tularosa, a town about an hour and a half’s drive from Trinity. She remembers that from a very young age there were many cancer diagnoses in her family and community. And for years, they had been considering the theory that the cause was the radiation left by the bomb. Then, when she studied Chemistry and Biology at the university, she understood that it was indeed very likely.

But it was not until she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1998, at just 39 years of age, that she became determined to understand what had happened. This is Tina:

[Tina Cordova]: So, Natalia, I even believe having cancer prepared me to do this work. 

[Natalia]: She is certain that cancer has prepared her for what she does. She began by looking up newspapers, news, articles that discussed the health effects of radiation contamination.

She read about a group of women in Idaho who told a story very similar to that of Tularosa. They, their families, and their communities had become ill with cancer, especially thyroid cancer. Their towns had been exposed to very high levels of radiation between the 1950s and 1960s when the United States used Nevada, a neighboring state, as a site for nuclear weapons testing.

These women used a term to refer to themselves: downwinders, meaning “those who live downwind.” An adjective that would start being used in the United States to refer to people exposed to radioactive contamination from weapons testing or nuclear accidents.

That was when Tina understood that her community, the people who lived around the bomb explosion, were also downwinders… in fact, the first in history.

[Tina]: And I believe that there was a very significant environmental racism associated with this.

[Natalia]: Tina believes this was an environmental crime motivated by racism.

[Tina]: We became nothing more than collateral damage. We were those brown people, those Hispanics, those Native Americans that lived in those communities. They viewed us as subhuman, and they had to do that to be able to harm us so significantly.

[Natalia]: Let me translate that: They were just collateral damage. They were just brown-skinned people, Hispanics, Native Americans, and they—those in charge of the project—saw them as subhuman. They had to see them that way, in order to do such great harm to them.

Tina wanted to do something with all the information she had read, but she didn’t know what or how until 2005, when she read a letter to the editor in a local newspaper. It was signed by Fred Tyler, a neighbor of hers. His family also believed the radiation theory, and he wanted to know whether anyone else thought the same, and he asked a question:

[Tina]: He basically asked the question: When are we going to hold our government accountable for what they did to us? 

[Natalia]:  When are we going to hold our government accountable for what they did to us?

This was what Tina was waiting for. She didn’t hesitate to write to him.

[Tina]: And I said, “I am willing to do this work with you.”

[Natalia]:  “I am willing to work with you.”

[Tina]: And we can start to make a safe place. Available for people to come forward and tell their stories. And I said we need to learn more about this by talking to community members. 

[Natalia]:  She proposed creating a safe space for more people to tell their stories, because the way to confirm her suspicions was to talk to the community. Tina went to Tularosa and made a plan with Fred. They would put up ads on the radio and in the newspaper, as well as posters throughout the town inviting people who had gotten cancer to a local neighborhood meeting.

Tina doesn’t remember the exact date, but she does remember that there were 50 very motivated people. They wanted to tell their own stories of the illness and those of their relatives. And there was something that struck her—the vast majority of those who attended had had problems with their thyroid or were taking medication for it.

So she asked them a question: 

[Tina]: And then I said, “Raise your hand If you’ve had thyroid cancer,” and it was amazing because I think at least half of the people raised their hands. 

[Natalia]: “How many of you have had thyroid cancer?” she asked. And it was shocking to her to see that half of them raised their hands. 

[Tina]: And I knew, I mean, it was an affirmation of what I knew.

[Natalia]: It was confirmation of what she already knew. It wasn’t normal for so many people in Tularosa to be sick with thyroid cancer. If she and Fred kept working, if they kept asking questions, many more people would speak up.

After that meeting, Fred and Tina created the Tularosa Downwinders Consortium, which later expanded to include all the Trinity downwinders.

And soon after they founded the organization, they learned that in 1990, the government had passed a compensation law for downwinders in the state of Utah, and for workers in uranium mines throughout the country. These people could receive up to $50,000 per person. It’s called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA.

But the two were surprised to find that, even though the law had been amended to include people from more states, the New Mexico downwinders were not among them. So Fred and Tina set out to get RECA amended again, so that their community would be added and have access to that compensation for all the illnesses they had suffered.

Tina has lost count of how many survivors have spoken to her since that first meeting of 50 people. 

[Tina]: Oh my gosh! I’ve lost count of the people who’ve told me about what they have experienced. Many of them are gone now. But so many people came forward to tell me their histories. Um, individually, and then in group settings when we would have town hall meetings.

[Natalia]: She has heard them individually or in groups. They are Hispanic New Mexicans, Native Americans, and also whites. Many of them have passed away, but others have become friends and some even colleagues, members of the consortium. Like Bernice, after she saw Tina speaking on TV.

That time, like many others, Tina invited people from the affected area to come to an event in Albuquerque. It was the first time Bernice heard all this. 

[Bernice]: And it was like a light bulb turning on. And I said, “Oh, that explains why we are getting so much cancer in my family.”

[Natalia]:  And just as Tina had done with Fred, Bernice looked up her phone number. She called, they spoke directly, and Bernice went to the event.

Then she began researching how many people in her family had gotten sick from radiation. She wrote down names and illnesses on a list. When we talked, she showed me that document. She had it printed out and ready to show to me.

[Bernice]: Everything in red are relatives with cancer. 

[Natalia]: Wow.

[Bernice]: So. There are a lot. 

[Natalia]: Is that your family? 

[Bernice]: Yes.

[Natalia]: There are 38 names on both her mother’s and father’s side. That’s six generations of cancer of the colon, breast, ovaries, pancreas, liver, stomach, brain, lungs, leukemia and, of course, thyroid. Nine people, including Bernice, have survived illnesses or medical conditions linked to radiation exposure, such as thyroid nodules or benign tumors in the lungs; 29 of her relatives have had cancer, and at least 12 have died. Even her own mother. It’s impossible not to be outraged by something like that.

[Bernice]: My family feels angry. They feel sad. They feel that the harm the government did to us is not fair. They should not have done what they did, knowing what was going to happen.

[Natalia]:  And not just her family, but also others in Carrizozo, her town, and in other places around the site of the explosion.

[Bernice]: And ever since, I have been helping with the project to get compensation for the people of New Mexico. Because we have never, ever received even a dime.

[Natalia]: Not a penny. 

When I went to New Mexico, Tina, Bernice and other members of the consortium were participating in various public events. I accompanied them to some.

[Tina]: (Speech): Good afternoon, everyone. It’s such a pleasure to be here. Before I get into talking about the subject that I’m going to talk about, I want to first say some Thank you.

[Natalia]: Their idea was to motivate people to lobby Congress to include New Mexico downwinders in RECA. When this law was created, it was determined that it would only be in effect until 2022, but at that time, it was extended two more years, until June 10, 2024. On that date, they would have the last opportunity to request an amendment that would extend the list of beneficiaries.

When I accompanied them to these events, in March 2024, I could see and hear several times when they heard about more people getting sick. They receive this type of news all the time. 

[Tina]: It’s so hard to accept it. And so we… we just push it further and further down.

[Natalia]:  These are losses that are difficult to accept, and that are repressed deep inside.

In 2013, Tina’s father passed away. He was 71 years old and was first diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. Then prostate cancer. And finally, cancer of the tongue. He had no risk factors. He was a healthy person, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t chew tobacco, he didn’t have any viruses. And the doctors told him that it was probably due to all the milk that he drank as a child and that was contaminated with radioactive particles.

He died after several procedures that deformed his face and even caused him to lose his teeth. Tina says that what she suffered from her illness is nothing compared to what her father had to go through.

Bernice’s oldest son, Toby Jr., also died in 2020 from leukemia.

[Bernice]: It’s still hard to talk about it. 

[Natalia]:  It happened very fast. In less than a year and a half since he was diagnosed. He was 56 years old.

These types of multiple or very aggressive cancers, even in healthy people, are very common in New Mexico. Tina will never forgive the government for not warning them. Not before, during, or after the explosion.  

[Tina]: And I’ll never forgive our government for not warning them. I’ll never forgive our government for all of this, for what I’ve seen people go through.

[Natalia]: But the anguish also spreads like an illness. So, they think not only about the past and what has been lost, but about the future. And they wonder, not whether someone else in their family will get sick, but who and when.  

[Bernice]: So it’s stressful, because we don’t know who will be the next to get cancer. Who else is going to get sick? I have six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter, and I worry.

[Natalia]: Tina too. She worries about her son constantly. 

[Tina]: I know this sounds crazy, but I ask him regularly, “How have you been feeling? Have you been to the doctor lately? Have you? You know, follow up on that, don’t forget, you go.” Get that done, you know. 

[Natalia]: She always asks him how he is doing, whether he’s been to the doctor or he’s had any check-ups, and tells him to not forget to do that. 

[Tina]: It’s like having this other thing that exists on your shoulder, always there, that you never can sort of get rid of. It’s that constant wondering who’s going to be next. 

[Natalia]:  Let me clarify that: It’s like having something on your shoulder. Always there. You can’t get rid of it. The constant doubt of who will be next.

I think it’s one thing to know that death can come at any moment… Yes. We’re all going to die. We will, but so will the people we love the most. We know it. Anyone can get sick or have an accident. But this is something else. It’s living with a very certain fear, with a kind of resignation that at some point cancer will come. But it’s also living with indignation and coraje. That word that, in places like New Mexico, is used to express both indignation and bravery. Emotions that Tina, Bernice and their group use to seek reparation. Even if it can never be enough.

Perhaps the most serious thing is that their fear will not disappear soon, not even for their children, their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren. The radioactivity of the plutonium used to make the bomb decreases by half after 24 thousand years. And it’s not even a hundred years since Trinity happened. Meanwhile, the Army Public Affairs Office that runs the site says that radiation at Trinity, while higher than in other surrounding areas, is negligible and people can visit without a problem.

I asked Tina whether she ever thought about leaving New Mexico to escape the radiation that probably still lingers there. She said no. 

[Tina]: There’s that sense of belonging. And there’s also…

[Natalia]:  It is the place where they belong, and also… 

[Tina]: And there’s also like I tell everybody. We’d been exposed for all our lives. What good would it be to leave now?

[Natalia]: Tina says there’s one thing she often tell to people who ask her the same thing: If they’ve been exposed to that radiation all their lives, what’s the point of leaving now? The DNA of their ancestors who witnessed the explosion was damaged by the radiation, and that damage was also replicated in their descendants. 

[Tina]: You know the only safe day was July 15th, 1945, and we didn’t know. So what’s the use of leaving now? 

[Natalia]: The only day they were safe and in time to evacuate was July 15, 1945, the day before the test. And they didn’t know. No one told them anything. So, she insists, what’s the point of leaving now? And where, anyway? With what money? Cancer cannot only kill you, but it puts you in debt.

The RECA Compensation Law expired on June 10, 2024, and with it, the deadline for amendments ended. None of the New Mexico downwinders were included. Bernice and Tina told me they are disappointed and angry, but they are already making new plans and strategies. Because they are not going anywhere, and they do not plan to stop until they are asked for forgiveness and receive the money they deserve. For now, they have already achieved something very important: The history has been told. And now, people know about it. 

[Archive soundbite: Downwinders song]

[Paul Pino]: It ain’t over til we win. We’ll come back again and again… 

[Daniel]: This song is by Paul Pino, a Carrizozo downwinder and member of the Consortium.

After two complaints in 2004, the U.S. Congress acknowledged that the Hispanic owners of the Pajarito Plateau did not receive fair payment for their property or adequate legal representation. A $10 million compensation fund was created and distributed among all the descendants. Some received only the equivalent of the cost of a laptop computer.

The Department of Energy did not respond to us as to why the New Mexico downwinders were not included in RECA. But it did say that at the time of the explosion, an evacuation plan was created around Trinity, but since they did not find high levels of radiation in inhabited areas, they did not evacuate the people.

This year, the United States has begun producing plutonium cores for nuclear weapons or bombs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Such cores have not been produced since the end of the Cold War. And Los Alamos is estimated to produce about 30 each year.

Natalia Sánchez Loayza is a journalist based in Philadelphia, United States. This story was edited by Camila Segura, David Trujillo, Aneris Casassus and me. Bruno Scelza did the fact checking. Sound design is by Andrés Azpiri with music by Ana Tuirán.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Pablo Argüelles, Lucía Auerbach, Adriana Bernal, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Rémy Lozano, Selene Mazón, Juan David Naranjo, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Barbara Sawhill, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, Luis Fernando Vargas y Desirée Yépez.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO. 

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed on the Hindenburg PRO program.

If you enjoyed this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us continue narrating the region.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.