Tularosa Downwinders host candlelight vigil today
TULAROSA – The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium is hosting today their ninth annual candlelight vigil to acknowledge the negative health effects suffered by the people of New Mexico due to the Trinity Site atomic bomb test.
The vigil begins at 8 p.m. with the gates opening at 7:30 p.m. at the Tularosa Little League Field on La Luz Avenue in West Tularosa.
Luminarias will be on sale for a suggested donation of $1 each.
Event remembers cancer victims, honors survivors
The event is to memorialize those who lost their lives to cancer and honor those who are living with or who have survived cancer.
As part of the Manhattan Project, the world's first atomic bomb was tested at the Trinity Site north of Alamogordo on the now White Sands Missile Range precisely at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945. The successful test meant an atomic bomb using plutonium could be used by the U.S. military against Japan during World War II.
The Tularosa Basin Downwinders believe this very same test disturbed the genetics of residents in surrounding communities, leaving a cluster of cancer and illness in the those who witnessed the atomic bomb, and their descendants. For 13 years, the Downwinders have been working to be included in an amendment to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
Downwinders co-founder Tina Cordova said the Downwinders started the candlelight vigil nine years ago to keep the memory alive of the people who lost their lives to cancer.
“We developed the event nine years ago to make sure we kept the memory alive of all those people that we’ve lost,” Cordova said. “The science and industry of Trinity, that story gets told at ad nauseam. We wanted to make sure that we memorialize the people we lost and loved as the result of over exposure of radiation that took place after Trinity.”
Vigil aims to keep the memories of victims alive
She said it’s an opportunity for all the communities effected by Trinity Site to come together.
“We open the gates at 7:30 p.m. and people can write the name of a person who has passed away from cancer,” Cordova said. “We make a luminaria in memory of them then their name is read. There’s a family the Van Winkles who play tuned bowls that’s the backdrop to reading of the names with a gong. It’s a beautiful and somber memorial.”
She said she wants people to work with us to keep the memory of the people alive.
“If we don’t tell this story or if we do what we can to keep their memory alive then their memories are lost forever,” Cordova said. “It’s part of our work to make sure our names are documented that people documented as those who lost their lives after Trinity.”
She said last year the Tularosa Basin Downwinders lit close to 800 luminarias but sadly they expect that number to grow.
“Obviously, we’ve lost more people this year then people will come forward with names that we haven’t included in the past,” Cordova said.
Recently the Downwinders travelled to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the need to enact legislation to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
“It’s the first committee hearing to consider the amendment to RECA,” Cordova said. “It was a historic event because three U.S. senators in attendance. They acknowledged we exist. They acknowledged we were harmed. They acknowledged the U.S. government should take responsibility for us. It was very historic because the U.S. government has never acknowledged those three things.”