New Mexico unveils new sign memorializing Trinity Test downwinders

SOCORRO COUNTY — A crowd of activists, politicians, journalists and New Mexico Department of Transportation employees gathered on the side of U.S. 380 Wednesday to unveil a new sign commemorating the history of the first nuclear bomb test’s effects on surrounding communities.

“For those children who were out there that day playing while there were particles in the sky that were falling, while the laundry that was being hung had black material — people didn’t know where that was coming from — for the snakes, the squirrels and other animals that were dead, we’re not going to forget,” New Mexico Lt. Gov. Howie Morales said before a red ribbon was cut to unveil the new sign on the 80th Trinity Test anniversary.

New Mexico House Rep. Joanne Ferrary, D-Las Cruces, sponsored a resolution to place the new memorial at the intersection of U.S. 380 and N.M. 525, after much advocacy from groups like the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.

N.M. 525 leads to White Sands Missile Range’s Stallion Gate, the entrance the public is allowed to use twice a year when the Trinity site, where the bomb was detonated, is opened to visitors.

“We finally have a memorial, long overdue, telling our story — something that we have worked so hard to get out into the open,” said Bernice Gutierrez, who was born in Carrizozo eight days before the bomb test.

While the state government is adding a new sign to officially recognize how fallout from the nuclear bomb test affected New Mexicans, the federal government also recognized New Mexico downwinders earlier this month.

New Mexico was added as a downwind state in a federal program that compensates people who grew sick after above-ground nuclear bomb tests. That program, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, was extended through 2028.

“Two years is not enough. I mean, we’ve been waiting 80 years,” Gutierrez said.

Down N.M. 525, Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester was applying sunscreen outside the Stallion Gate as he waited to meet his fellow New Mexico archbishops. Wester was one of nine religious and community leaders allowed inside the missile range Wednesday to pray at the Trinity site.

Wester thinks the development of artificial intelligence and hypersonic delivery systems heightens the threat of nuclear weapons being used. He’d like to see more support for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which 93 countries have signed, including the Vatican.

“Many of us rang our church bells this morning at 5:29, and I know some people said to me, ‘Well, you’re going to wake people up.’ And I thought, yeah, I hope so. I hope we wake people up to the reality of what’s going on,” Wester said.