“They didn’t want to see us”

By Aviva Nathan, Searchlight New Mexico
Published on July 15, 2025

The roadside monument for New Mexico’s downwinders, near the entrance to the Trinity Site. Courtesy of Tina Cordova

At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the U.S. government detonated the first atomic bomb at the White Sands Missile Range in Socorro County, New Mexico. At homes and farms as close as 12 miles away, many people were still asleep. Others had started on morning chores. After the blast, radioactive ash fell from the sky for five days — onto water sources, kitchen countertops, clothes hung up to dry, grass grazed by cattle and vegetables still in the ground. Children played in flakes that they thought were from a miraculous summertime snowfall.

In the town of Tularosa, 49 miles from Ground Zero, families collected rainwater in cisterns for drinking and cooking. During the dry season, Anastacio Cordova, who was four years old when the bomb went off, was responsible for scooping out sludge from the bottom of his family’s cistern and checking for cracks. “That sludge was full of plutonium that fell from the sky that day, and my dad trudged around in it,” says his daughter, Tina Cordova, who grew up in Tularosa and now lives in Albuquerque. He died at 71, after battling three kinds of cancer.

“The U.S. bombed its own people first,” Melissa Parke says. “And then there would go on to be more than 2,000 nuclear bombs exploded around the world, with … enduring and devastating consequences for all those communities, mainly Indigenous, colonized and vulnerable populations.”

Following the blast, the “downwinders” closest to the explosion — residents of the mostly Nuevomexicano and Indigenous communities in Lincoln, Otero, Sierra and Socorro counties — began suffering from much higher rates of cancers and other diseases. Infant mortality rates spiked during the summer of the bombing.

The death toll and the full scope of adverse health effects from the detonation remain unknown, in part because the federal government never conducted a complete epidemiological study. Cordova, who co-founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC) in 2005, says that more than 1,000 fallout-related deaths have occurred over the past 80 years in Tularosa and the surrounding area. In 2017, the TBDC surveyed 82 people in Socorro County and 419 in Otero County and found that, among both groups, close to 20 percent had developed thyroid disease and more than a fourth had suffered from various kinds of cancer — conditions linked to radiation. Cordova, who is 65 and herself a survivor of thyroid cancer, is part of a family who say that members of five generations developed cancer because of the Trinity bomb detonation.

The blast happened in an instant, but it has not been isolated in time, place or effect. At the center of the “gadget” — as the bomb was nicknamed by its Manhattan Project creators — was a 13-pound sphere of plutonium-239, a fissile isotope of an element whose name derives from the Roman god of the dead. Plutonium’s radioactive isotopes have a half-life of around 24,100 years, or 700 generations. In 2023, several universities and research institutions demonstrated in a joint study that fallout from the Trinity detonation had made its way to at least 46 U.S. states, Mexico and Canada.

“We bury our loved ones on a regular basis, and then somebody else is diagnosed,” Cordova says.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the detonation, and for the first time, New Mexico’s downwinders will be eligible to receive funds through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a 1990 law that originally provided payments to workers who participated in nuclear testing, uranium mining and milling and ore transportation, as well as to people downwind of the Nevada Test Site used from 1951 to 1992. On July 4, the law was reauthorized and expanded under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to include downwinders in New Mexico, Idaho, Utah and Arizona, along with people who have been exposed to radiation from nuclear waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. It also adds other eligible categories of uranium workers.

But the federal government still hasn’t offered a formal apology to the downwinders, who continue to push for acknowledgement. On July 16, with support from the state of New Mexico, the TBDC will unveil its own memorial for them: a sign that commemorates what they have endured. It will stand beside U.S. Route 380, by the Stallion Gate Entrance to the Trinity Site. For ten years, downwinders have stood outside the site’s annual open house, promoting awareness of the deaths that occurred after Trinity. Some passersby have engaged with them, but most either ignore them, yell at them or even flip them off. Now, thanks to their efforts, there will be permanent recognition.

At a July 12 gathering sponsored by Back from the Brink, a national coalition that works to abolish nuclear weapons, Cordova discussed the sign’s significance, which lies in memory and awareness. “My great-great-grandchildren and yours,” she said, “will be able to stop there and know the history of what really happened.”

Institutional knowledge

Cordova has long maintained that the U.S. government intentionally chose to disregard the safety of New Mexican communities. When the army selected the Trinity Site, Manhattan Project officials declared internally that the area surrounding the detonation zone was unpopulated — language that echoes the concept of terra nullius, evoked during the colonization of America. “They didn’t want to see us,” Cordova says.

But Manhattan Project personnel were aware of the risks that would be imposed on uninformed and unconsenting civilians, including the likelihood of radioactive ash spreading widely.

Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan Project, had an evacuation plan prepared for the communities near the site — evidence that government officials knew the area was populated. It consisted of loading people from the town of Carrizozo into filthy, unventilated cattle trucks in the July heat, to be carted away on dirt roads. Evacuation by train was a feasible alternative. Ultimately, though, Groves refused to evacuate downwinders at all, even when radiation levels after the detonation exceeded pre-set standards for an evacuation order.

Once a year, in October, the Trinity Site is opened to the public. Tourists come by the thousands. The White Sands Missile Range’s Frontier Club dining service sells hot dogs and hamburgers. The Department of Defense’s Morale, Welfare, and Recreation organization sells keychains and T-shirts. Armed guards prevent visitors from carrying away pieces of trinitite — a green, glass-like material forged from the sand melted by blast heat — as souvenirs. When tourists reach Ground Zero, they see a shallow depression and a 12-foot obelisk constructed from volcanic rock. Only one person is mentioned on the obelisk’s plaque: John Frederick Thorlin, the army general who erected it, 20 years after the bomb was detonated.

For eight decades, downwinders have had to raise funds for health treatments themselves — through grassroots methods like garage and bake sales, enchilada suppers and car washes. When a two-year-old from Tularosa recently lost her eye to cancer, the community used these methods to raise funds for out-of-state treatment.

With the recent expansion of RECA, New Mexican downwinders will finally have a chance to receive compensation from the government, something that Cordova and other downwinders had been demanding for more than 18 years. In 2024, a bipartisan group of senators — including New Mexico Democrats Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, along with Missouri Republican Josh Hawley — proposed a stand-alone bill for re-authorization and expansion. But House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked it from being considered in the House, where, according to Cordova, it had a majority of votes. Johnson said it was too expensive.

Activists note that an important statement of value is built into decisions about which programs are considered worthy of funding. At the same time that RECA is being expanded, the budget for the production of nuclear weapons is being raised: it now amounts to 84 percent of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s total annual costs.

“Nuclear weapons programs, and specifically production programs for new-design nuclear weapons, are rapidly expanding, escalating a new nuclear arms race,” says Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a Santa Fe-based advocacy group. “But the victims have still not been justly compensated.”

A “bittersweet” expansion 

Although expansion of RECA has been seen as a silver lining in Trump’s new law, Cordova says that, in some ways, it’s “the worst possible scenario.” The legislation simultaneously strips many New Mexicans, including a significant number of downwinders, of Medicaid, and it imperils New Mexico’s struggling healthcare system. The government “is going to spend trillions of dollars on modernizing our nuclear arsenal while we die in the streets,” Cordova told the audience at the Back from the Brink event.

Medical experts are deeply concerned about the effects the bill will have on New Mexicans’ health. Speaking at a June 20 roundtable discussion hosted by Senator Heinrich on the implications of the projected cuts, Dr. Damara Kaplan, a urologist at the New Mexico Cancer Center, said that when patients lose this coverage, “care becomes more expensive, more fragmented, and unpredictable. Patients’ outcomes are going to be much worse if they lose this continuity.”

Unlike several previous iterations of RECA, ongoing healthcare coverage will not be part of the new compensation. But health screenings will. Under the expansion, New Mexican downwinders will be eligible for a one-time payment of $100,000. To qualify, they’ll have to prove that they, or a family member, lived for at least one year in any part of New Mexico between September 24, 1944, and November 6, 1962, and developed specific diseases.

Finding the necessary paperwork will be a challenge for many. The bill renews RECA for two years, a time limit that may preclude people from cobbling together documentation from so far back. For some, the papers may not exist.

In addition, the expansion does not cover several affected communities in Guam, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Montana. To Cordova, those who have been omitted are like family. In 2018, she formed a coalition with them to lobby for accountability. The exclusion contributes to her belief that RECA’s passage in this legislation is “bittersweet.”

There are questions surrounding why senators chose to include the communities they did, while leaving out the others. The prime mover was Senator Hawley, who spearheaded the effort to insert the expansion of RECA into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Hawley championed RECA in large part to obtain compensation for constituents in St. Louis. Starting in 1949, thousands of residents there were exposed to radiation from nuclear waste left over by the uranium processing that happened in the city during the Manhattan Project. Hawley got involved after news organizations published a 2023 exposé of the government’s failure to protect locals from radiation. But the reasons behind the bill’s selective inclusion of other communities devastated by the nuclear industry remain unclear.

During a July 8 press conference, Hawley expressed gratitude to workers and downwinders, framing their unchosen suffering as a patriotic sacrifice. He described the compensation as a kind of apology. But he also characterized the fallout as an event in the past, rather than an ongoing source of harm.

“We are making sure our history is written”

Cordova’s frustrations point to a gulf between New Mexicans’ reckoning with the Trinity detonation and federal authorities’ preferred narrative about it. While the government treats the event as isolated, Cordova sees the Manhattan Project as the first use of New Mexico as a modern government colony, used for purposes ranging from the nuclear weapons industry to the creation and spread of forever chemicals.

At the Back from the Brink event, Myrriah Gómez, the author of “Nuclear Nuevo México” and an associate professor at the Honors College of the University of New Mexico, talked about the manifestations of nuclear colonialism. She pointed to the government’s displacement of Nuevomexicano and Indigenous communities for the creation of Los Alamos National Laboratory. She also talked about the 254 radioactive lanthanum detonations conducted in Bio Canyon at Los Alamos — as part of the Manhattan Project — which spread toxic fallout to the communities of Santa Clara Pueblo, San Ildefonso Pueblo and the village of El Rancho.

Several events have been held in the lead-up to the July 16 anniversary, including Back from the Brink on July 12 and an interfaith gathering in Albuquerque on July 13. On the 80th anniversary itself — in addition to a mass with three Catholic bishops, a dinner and a candlelight vigil — the TBDC will hold a sign dedication on the side of Highway 380. The sign, which was made by the New Mexico Department of Transportation, will include a map that recognizes the estimated half-million people who were living within a 150-mile radius of Ground Zero at the time of the detonation. (After Trinity, that radius was adopted as the minimum safe distance for the testing of nuclear weapons.)

Melissa Parke, the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons — which won the Nobel Peace prize in 2017 for implementing the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons — will be at the ceremony, with the goal, she says, of “listening and understanding what is happening in New Mexico.”

“The U.S. bombed its own people first,” Parke says. “And then there would go on to be more than 2,000 nuclear bombs exploded around the world, with … enduring and devastating consequences for all those communities, mainly Indigenous, colonized and vulnerable populations.”

Efforts to preserve and spread this suppressed account of the Trinity bombing also include the TBDC’s forthcoming development of a high school curriculum, and filmmaker Lois Lipman’s creation of a 2023 documentary called “First We Bombed New Mexico,” which includes extensive testimony from downwinders.

During Cordova’s speech at the Back from the Brink event, she spoke of RECA as a starting point for further acts of restitution. “It’s a crack in the dam,” she said. “It’s an open door.”

Paul Pino, a downwinder from Carrizozo, took the stage at the interfaith remembrance. Strumming his guitar, he sang a folk song he wrote, called “It Ain’t Over ’Til We Win.” Audience members began clapping and singing with him. At the end, Pino counted down from three and everyone shouted, in triumph: “And we won!” As he was preparing to leave the stage, Pino, no longer amplified by the microphone, reflected, “Now we won, and it still ain’t over.”