First We Bombed New Mexico

Unfortunately, for decades, the US government lied to the world and told us that Oppenheimer and Groves performed the world's first atomic test in an isolated desert site. In many ways, Christopher Nolan's acclaimed 2023 film repeats this propaganda. This important documentary film by director Lois Lipman reveals the frightening and racist underbelly that even "Oppenheimer" didn't dare to truthfully convey.

Rather than occurring in an isolated place, the world's first atomic attack was carried out by white scientists on majority Indigenous and Latino nuevomexicano communities in New Mexico. Thousands of people lived nearby and perhaps a million lived across the state, El Paso, and Juarez. Across the entire state, locals have fallen victim to a variety of horrific cancers. The nuclear industry with Los Alamos poisons portions of the north of the state and the Trinity Site in the south.

The documentary wisely relies on a number of experts and professors but it largely and beautifully focuses on activist and community organizer Tina Cordova. Cordova is the director of the New Mexican downwinders and has lost family members to cancer, while also being a cancer survivor herself. Tina's story is so important as her leadership amongst Latinos, Indigenous peoples, and others in the state have provided many a chance at some form of justice given that the US has provided reparations and medical care to other states but not New Mexico. Watch this acclaimed independent film today about this horrific example of environmental racism. Then call your representatives in Congress to convey to them your support for expanding the support for survivors through RECA to include New Mexico!