05: The Lab (Part 01)

When the Manhattan Project arrived on the Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico, the land was not uninhabited. To establish the highly secretive Site Y, the United States military forcibly removed generations of Nuevomexicano ranchers and blocked regional Indigenous groups from accessing sacred sites. Almost immediately, the lab began detonating massive amounts of explosives, scarring the landscape. Military personnel regularly dumped nuclear waste into local canyon systems that ultimately flowed into the Rio Grande. When World War II came to a close, though, the lab did not.  More than eight decades later, an apocalyptic weapons factory—Los Alamos National Laboratory—still looms over the Pueblos and villages north of Santa Fe. Ninety miles south, Sandia National Laboratory and Kirtland Air Force Base store thousands of nuclear warheads beneath the city of Albuquerque. Both laboratories are expanding in scope and scale.  This week, you'll hear from Dr. Alicia Romero, curator at the Albuquerque Museum and part of the steering commitee of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium; Yvonne Montoya, a Nuevomexicana dancer and choreographer; Dr. Myrriah Gómez, a scholar documenting nuclear colonialism in New Mexico; Joni Arends, co-founder and executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety; Archbishop John C Wester, of the Archiocese of Santa Fe; and members of Veterans for Peace.  Learn more, make a donation, or find a text-based version of today's program at: timezeropod.com. For a deep dive into the impacts of nuclear colonialism across the state of New Mexico, check out (and bookmark) Nuclear Watch New Mexico.  And visit the website of Tewa Women United to learn more about intersectional justice projects that center northern New Mexico communties.