Nuclear Nuevo México Quotes

“nuclear alienation is the process through which Nuevomexicanas/os are estranged, simultaneously, from both the nuclear industrial complex and their home communities. This nuclear alienation stems from their subjectivities as interstitial objects that exist in a space somewhere between the nuclear industry and their home communities. Local workers from the nearby valleys were forced to straddle their positionality as Tewa or Nuevomexicanas/os in communities that were dependent on subsistence farming and mutual aid. They abandoned their traditional roles in their communities in exchange for good-paying jobs in Los Alamos. They were bused to the Pajarito Plateau to become blue-collar workers in the dangerous nuclear industrial complex. As a result, they were further alienated, both socially and economically, from their families because of their jobs (which also separated them from their small villages in the Valley). Socially, they were unable to talk about their work in Los Alamos. Some of them did speak up about the mistreatment that they received there, but others preferred that their neighbors only see the social mobility they had achieved.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“What is happening in Los Alamos today began with memory, but we are on the verge of losing our memory. If we lose our language, we will lose most of our environmental history. Never! Our memory has now assumed the form of the landscape itself. This is the essence of Querencia, if we lose either memory or landscape, we lose both” (Arellano 1997, 32). Arelleno places bioregionalism, the understanding of the place we live, in direct conversation with another term: querencia, which he describes as “that which gives us a sense of place, that which anchors us to the land, that which makes us a unique people” (Arellano 2007, 50). He tells us that the intimate understanding of environmental history that Nuevomexicanos have of Los Alamos is associated almost entirely with memory.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“A geographical palimpsest can be described as a place that has shifted purposes over a vast period of time. From Indigenous communities to Spanish settlers to Euro-American pothunters to Anglo land-grabbers to Nuevomexicana/o homesteaders to an elite boys’ school to the Manhattan Project to the current national laboratory, the space has changed ownership and function since around 1600 CE, when the Pueblo peoples atop the plateau abandoned their homes.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“In “La Querencia: La Raza Bioregionalism,” Nuevomexicano scholar Juan Estevan Arellano (1997) discusses bioregionalism, or our basic understanding of place, “the immediate specific place where we live,”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“environmental racism. For the purposes here, I define environmental racism using Chavis’s definition: Environmental racism is racial discrimination in environmental policymaking. It is racial discrimination in the enforcement of regulations and laws. It is racial discrimination in the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries. It is racial discrimination in the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of positions and pollutants in communities of color. And, it is racial discrimination in the history of excluding people of color from the mainstream environmental groups, decision making boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. (Chavis 1999, 4) Environmental racism can be divided into three categories: procedural, geographic, and social equity/inequity. Procedural equity/inequity refers to policies and procedures, regulations, laws, and enforcement. Geographic equity/inequity includes siting and sanctioning of polluting industries. Social equity/inequity covers the racial, ethnic, and cultural aspects of targeted communities. Separately, these issues can be examined to tell the stories of communities that have been sickened by polluting industries, but when analyzed together, they tell a more nuanced story of the institutionalized behavior that is known as environmental racism.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“He defines the term scientific colonialism: In view of New Mexico land tenure and economic history, the power of the state through its military, selected, condemned and occupied land in Los Alamos displaying a classical definition of colonialism, where military power of a state controls other people’s land. . . . There was no colonialist imperative of territorial conquest—manifest destiny—or carrying out a civilizing mission—Spanish colonialism—but a new version of colonial legacy that promoted technoscience. (104) This definition expands the general definition of colonialism, an event in which “military power of state controls other people’s land” by introducing science, namely nuclear science, and national safety as the ambition behind the U.S. government’s need to colonize.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“In Methodology of the Oppressed, postcolonial theorist Chela Sandoval (2000) simplifies the term myth,24 which she transcodes as “ideology” (90). She says that “human meanings easily proliferate, complicate, and rise to what Roland Barthes called a ‘mythical’ level of understanding, appropriation, and exchange. This ‘mythical’ level is ideology, and ideology is what extends consciousness into an alienated ‘phony’ social life, the everyday life of citizen-subjects that seems more real than real” (93).”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Los Alamos has been presented through nationalist discourse as an American city that was born overnight, which ignores how Indigenous peoples and Nuevomexicanas/os were forcefully removed from the land and became subjects of modernity. That is, under modernity, different forms of life were destroyed— both human and nonhuman life. Indigenous, Nuevomexicana/o, and white locals were forced, under modernity, to become workers at the Lab. These people and their environments have been permanently diseased by nuclear waste and the accompanying racism and classism that have pervaded the region. The U.S. government intended to emancipate U.S. residents from war, including New Mexicans; however, the role of Los Alamos in the Manhattan Project and the U.S. government’s reorganization of local epistemologies and hierarchies forced Nuevomexicanas/os into subordinate subject positions.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Misnaming, renaming, and obscuring names is emblematic of colonialism. During Spanish colonization in New Mexico, names of people and places in Indigenous languages were renamed using the Spanish language. During U.S. colonization, Spanish names were changed to suit English speakers (i.e., Alburquerque to Albuquerque). Take, for example, one of the sacred mountains in my community. The Tewa name is Tu’u jo ping.18 The Spanish renamed it la mesita huerfana (the little orphan mountain). Today, it is known mostly as Black Mesa. You will see this phenomenon as a broader problem in nuclear colonialism throughout this book. Other scholars continue this colonial mechanism of misnaming and misspelling even as they try to examine nuclear colonialism. For example, in Lucie Genay’s (2019) monograph, Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry, she misspells multiple New Mexico place names throughout the book, notably Los Lunas, where I currently live, which she calls “Las Lunes” (114), and the Indigenous community of Church Rock, where the notable 1979 uranium spill occurred, which she writes as “Chuck Rock” (12, 179). These types of misspellings, whether intentional or accidental, are inexcusable. It is how histories are erased, particularly by outsiders.19 More importantly, it contributes to the creation of intergenerational trauma. There is nothing “enchanting” about New Mexico’s nuclear history, and even joking about your time spent in the land of “entrapment,”20 as Genay does, capitalizes on a culture that she knows very little about. Nuevomexicanas/os are not her intended audience; she writes for the academy. She gives her audience what they want: an exotic setting where exotic things occurred.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Reclaiming Home I began this project years ago because I was homesick. I was homesick for the ranch in Los Alamos that I never knew. I was homesick for the grandfather who died of cancer before I could meet him. I was homesick for the Nuevomexicana/o ancestral space in Los Alamos from which Nuevomexicanas/os and Indigenous peoples have been alienated. We were forced to grow up in an atomic third space, a space that exists between the bomb and the bean fields, between the Atomic City and the Nuevomexicano Valley. I, too, am also afraid of going home. At least I was afraid until I began to see that Los Alamos was not the only region affected by the U.S. nuclear project. I began to realize that New Mexico, from corner to corner and everywhere in between, has been shaped and misshaped by nuclear colonialism.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“New Mexico literary scholar Patricia Marina Trujillo (2008) considers literary gentrification, which she defines as “a process invested in the restructuring of literary spaces for use by hegemonic institutions for the means of educating, representing identities of, and entertaining a reader about a space for middle-class consumers” (19). I would add to that definition that the stories written about Los Alamos and the development of nuclear industries in New Mexico are also written for a white audience.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Over seventy-five years of having the fabric of your consciousness ripped repeatedly by nuclear colonialism through lies and neglect, many Nuevomexicanas/os have developed this sixth sense. In fact, it is more than a “sense.” The locals know their local land and water supplies are contaminated from the nuclear material that was either buried in nearby canyons or on riverbanks. They know their presence on the Pajarito Plateau is being erased from national memory. They know they were placed in dangerous jobs because of their identities. They know the plutonium exploded into the atmosphere during the Trinity Test is making them sick. They know nuclear waste, if buried in their backyard, poses severe threats. This sensing, or rather an innate knowing, has resulted in many Nuevomexicanas/os speaking out against the nuclear industrial complex and demanding justice. Thus, this book argues that disease and death caused by the nuclear industrial complex throughout New Mexico have brought to light nuclear colonialism.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“When the U.S. government dichotomized the Hill and the Valley, the process generally forced Nuevomexicanas/os away from the land where they farmed, ranched, and remained in tune with the earth, and where Indigenous people maintained ancestral sites. Their connection(s) to the earth as farmers and ranchers were replaced by industrial jobs at the Lab.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Through recalling stories by Nuevomexicanas/os who live(d) and work(ed) under the boot of the nuclear weapons complex, I establish how native New Mexicans developed a nuclear facultad. Anzaldúa (1999) defines la facultad as The capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant “sensing,” a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning. It is an acute awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is, behind which feelings reside/hide. The one possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world. (60)”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“In 1942 the government ordered the construction of a perimeter fence around the then-secret Site Y of the Manhattan Project. Consequently, they established an explicit border to distinguish the scientists and army personnel within the fence, atop the Hill, as “insiders,” and the communities outside the fence, below the Hill, as “outsiders.” As a result of the distinction between the Hill and the Valley, Los Alamos has become what Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) writes of the borderlands region of South Texas: a “place of contradictions” where “hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape” (19). The Hill-Valley binary is not simply geographic. Chicano literary scholar José David Saldívar (1997) says of topospatial readings such as this one that “the aim of these topospatial readings, it bears some repeating, is to show the profound interactions of space and history, geography and psychology, nationhood and imperialism, and to define space as not just a ‘setting’ but as a formative presence throughout” (79). The U.S. military deliberately constructed this institution, and it continues to overshadow northern New Mexico seventy-five years after the Manhattan Project was instituted on the Pajarito Plateau. The dichotomizing of the Hill and the Valley made objects of the people of New Mexico by enticing them away from land-based lifestyles with well-paying jobs in the nuclear industry, jobs that ultimately sickened, injured, and even killed them by contamination or explosion. In the chapter “Entering into the Serpent” from Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa (1999) claims that “in trying to become ‘objective,’ Western culture made ‘objects’ of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing ‘touch’ with them. This dichotomy is the root of all violence” (59). Nuevomexicanas/os’ ascent up el camino de la culebra, the snake road, is a literal entering into the Anzaldúan serpent. This entering into the serpent is the catalyst for conocimiento, or a coming to consciousness.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Today, the nuclear industrial complex pervades New Mexico. What began as the nuclear weapons complex under the Manhattan Project has expanded into the commercial nuclear energy industry, and New Mexico is now a cradle-to-grave nuclear industrial complex, where everything from uranium mining to nuclear waste repositories occupies this place. A tacit, geographic binary shapes the cultural borderlands region of Los Alamos, New Mexico. It is a place of boundaries and borders.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“Nuclear colonialism began in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons complex began. If Spanish colonialism brought Spanish colonizers, and U.S. colonialism brought American colonizers, then nuclear colonialism brought nuclear colonizers—scientists, military personnel, atomic bomb testing, and nuclear waste among them. This book exposes nuclear colonialism as both the third major settler colonial period in New Mexico and as an “ism,” that is, a “form of doctrine, theory, or practice having, or claiming to have, a distinctive character or relation.”4 Rhetorician Danielle Endres defines nuclear colonialism as “a system of domination through which governments and corporations disproportionately target and devastate indigenous peoples and their lands to maintain the nuclear production process” (Endres 2009, 39). I would add to this definition what Patrick Wolfe (1999) says about settler colonialism: “the colonizers come to stay—invasion is a structure not an event” (2). In their essay “Rethinking Settler Colonialism,” Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita (2014) define colonization as a “state-sponsored settlement” and follow Wolfe’s rationale that settler colonialism is a form of colonialism in which “the colonists displace or eliminate the natives wholesale” (1041). Nuclear colonialism and settler colonialism share many of the same characteristics, but there is one major distinction: nuclear colonialism is a neocolonial framework that targets not only Indigenous people but also other ethnic minority groups in poor economic situations that have become disenfranchised because of state occupation of their homelands.5”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

“In the 1940s military and scientific personnel chose the Pajarito Plateau to site Project Y (or Site Y) of the secret Manhattan Project, where scientists would develop the atomic bomb. My grandmother’s family and other Nuevomexicanas/os and Tewa people were forcibly dispossessed of their ranches and sacred land on the Pajarito Plateau with inequitable or no compensation. Beginning in the 1940s, Lab personnel directed Valley vecinos2 to bury contaminated everything in the Los Alamos canyon and nearby along the Rio Grande. The soil and the water that Nuevomexicanas/os once used to irrigate crops is now polluted with toxic chemicals and remnants of nuclear materials.3 Cancer, thyroid disease, and unexplained organ failure, among other illnesses, now plague our community.”
― Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos