New Mexico

Making a Uranium Ghost Town

Both the Homestake Mining Company and New Mexico state regulators knew almost immediately that a uranium mine opened in 1958 was poisoning local groundwater. They didn't tell local residents, who have been fighting for their lives and for justice. 

Tularosa Downwinders: a 75 Year Wait for Justice

Residents of New Mexico's Tularosa basin received no advance warning of the 1945 atomic bomb tests nor of the risks to their health. They've been excluded from relief legislation that has benefitted residents near the Nevada test sites and workers in uranium mines. 

The Value of a "Greater Chaco" National Park

by Richard Moe

President Biden's decision to create a buffer zone around the Chaco Culture National Park protects not just a natural landscape but a potentially priceless trove of yet-to-be discovered artifacts and sites sacred to Native people today. 

Santa Fe's Historian Looks Ahead from Controversial Past

City Historian Valerie Rangel hopes to engage residents of Santa Fe with the complex and difficult histories of colonialism and racism that still shape the city and region. 

Latinos Forgotten Victims of US Nuclear Testing

Hispanic and Native residents of New Mexico who were excluded from the first Radiation Exposure Compensation Act are likely to be included in a bill to reauthorize the legislation. 

Treason, the Death Penalty, and American Identity

by Carlton F.W. Larson

The only capital sentence for treason carried out under United States law shows the way that racism is embedded in the idea of national belonging. 

Why New Mexico’s 1680 Pueblo Revolt Is Echoing in 2020 Protests

Indigenous groups in the Southwest are imbuing their activism this year with commemorations of the 340-year-old Pueblo Revolt, one of Spain’s bloodiest defeats in its colonial empire.

Cancer Cases Likely in Those Exposed to New Mexico Atomic Test

National Cancer Institute findings suggest that it is likely that some people exposed to fallout from the Trinity atomic bomb tests got cancer as a result. However, the incomplete data available make it unclear if the findings will help advance legislation to compensate "downwinders" for health damage.   

Racist, Brutal Past or Hispanic History? Latinos Clash over Spanish Colonial Statues

Activist and associate history professor Yolanda Leyva breaks down the complex legacy of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Mayor Says Controversial Monuments Will Go

Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber announced Wednesday that the city would be removing two monuments honoring Kit Carson, who commanded U.S. troops who forced Navajos to a concentration camp in the 1860s, as well as a statue of Don Diego De Vargas, a Spanish conquistador who murdered hundreds of Pueblo people.

Losing Women—and Women’s History—in Times of Crisis

by Megan Kate Nelson

Women and all of their visible and invisible labor are at the center of the COVID crisis, and they are finding their way into news coverage of the pandemic. The stories of women living and suffering and dying throughout history, however, have largely fallen by the wayside.

New Mexico Grapples With Its Version of Confederate Tributes: A Celebration of Spanish Conquest

The end of the Entrada is rekindling debate over how to portray New Mexico’s complex history.

Richard Moe calls on Obama to make Utah's Bears Ears a national monument. Bears Ears?

by Richard Moe

Bears Ears represents the most important and intact array of unprotected cultural resources on federal land.

Trinity test site still has radiation traces

The sun was rising as a teenage boy swung a metal wand back and forth, back and forth. The Geiger counter hanging at his waist clicked, testifying to the radiation streaming from the ground and through his body.The White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert is home to Trinity, the place where the nuclear age began on July 16, 1945. Twice a year, in April and October, the site has opened to the public. Each time, thousands of people arrive by Winnebago, motorcycle and tour bus, making a pilgrimage to check out the slight crater left by history’s first atom bomb test. Measuring just 340 feet across, the depression is underwhelming, a slight dent in the ground. A stone obelisk marks ground zero, where the bomb was detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower.The Trinity weapon, a version of which destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, used plutonium. That fuel was more far more efficient than the uranium in the bomb dropped over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, but it was thought to be less certain to work....

Obama to Name New National Monuments

President Obama, who has been criticized for favoring oil and gas development over land conservation in his first term, on Monday will designate five new national monuments, according to officials briefed on the decision.They are the First State National Monument in Delaware and Pennsylvania; the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; the San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington State; Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio and a monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway in Maryland....