Myrriah Gomez, Nuclear Nuevo México Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos

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In the 1940s military and scientific personnel chose the Pajarito Plateau to site Project Y of the secret Manhattan Project, where scientists developed the atomic bomb. Nuevomexicanas/os and Tewa people were forcibly dispossessed from their ranches and sacred land in north-central New Mexico with inequitable or no compensation.  Contrary to previous works that suppress Nuevomexicana/o presence throughout U.S. nuclear history, Nuclear Nuevo México focuses on recovering the voices and stories that have been lost or ignored in the telling of this history. By recuperating these narratives, Myrriah Gómez tells a new story of New Mexico, one in which the nuclear history is not separate from the collective colonial history of Nuevo México but instead demonstrates how earlier eras of settler colonialism laid the foundation for nuclear colonialism in New Mexico.  Gómez examines the experiences of Nuevomexicanas/os who have been impacted by the nuclear industrial complex, both the weapons industry and the commercial industry. Gómez argues that Los Alamos was created as a racist project that targeted poor and working-class Nuevomexicana/o farming families, along with their Pueblo neighbors, to create a nuclear empire. The resulting imperialism has left a legacy of disease and distress throughout New Mexico that continues today.

About the Author

Dr. Myrriah Gómez is  a Nuevomexicana from the Pojoaque Valley in northern New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in Latina/o Literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a 2011 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow. She joined the UNM Honors College in 2016, and she directs the Conexiones-Spain study abroad program. She is faculty coordinator for the UNM Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. 

Alicia Inez Guzmán was raised in the village of Truchas on land that belonged to her great-great grandmother. She holds a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in New York and has written extensively on histories of land use, queer and BIPOC artists, educational equity, and, most recently, New Mexico's historic wildfires. Currently, Alicia is a staff writer at Searchlight NM, an independent news outlet based in Santa Fe.