Deb Haaland and Rep. Vasquez to Attend RECA Film Screening, Host Q&A in Alamogordo

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland and U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez will join director Lois Lipman Wednesday evening at the Flickinger Center for a screening of the award-winning documentary First We Bombed New Mexico, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A.

The event arrives more than a year after Congress finally expanded the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include New Mexico’s long-excluded Downwinders — families exposed to radioactive fallout from the world’s first atomic bomb test.

On July 16, 1945, the United States detonated the Trinity device in the desert of what is now the White Sands Missile Range, roughly 40 miles west of Tularosa. Nearby Hispanic, Native American, and other rural communities were never warned. Fallout drifted across the Tularosa Basin and surrounding counties. Residents drank contaminated water and milk, ate local produce and livestock, and raised families in the shadow of the blast. For eight decades they reported elevated rates of rare and aggressive cancers across multiple generations while remaining shut out of the federal compensation program created for other nuclear-test victims.

Tina Cordova, a Tularosa native, cancer survivor, and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, became the public face of that fight. The documentary, directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker Lois Lipman, follows Cordova’s two-decade campaign of town halls, congressional testimony, and community organizing. Lipman spent roughly a decade documenting the stories of affected families and later re-edited the film after the July 2025 RECA expansion to include the historic breakthrough and its aftermath.

Under the expanded law, New Mexicans who lived in the state for at least one year between September 1944 and November 1962 and later developed one of a list of specified cancers can seek a one-time $100,000 payment. Federal data show that hundreds of claims have already been approved, delivering tens of millions of dollars to New Mexico families, with thousands more applications still pending. Advocates continue to push for further improvements, including higher compensation amounts, additional qualifying illnesses, use of affidavits for older rural and Indigenous claimants who lack complete records, and an extended filing window before the current deadline.

Alamogordo and the broader Tularosa Basin sit at the geographic and emotional center of this history. Wednesday’s screening at the Flickinger Center brings the film, its director, and two of New Mexico’s most prominent elected Democrats to the community most directly shaped by Trinity’s legacy.

Event details

What: Screening of First We Bombed New Mexico followed by discussion and Q&A

Who: Deb Haaland, Rep. Gabe Vasquez, and director Lois Lipman

When: Wednesday, August 12, 2026, 6:00 p.m.

Where: Flickinger Center, Alamogordo

Free tickets are available here: https://track-mg.mobilize.us/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmobilize.us%2Fs%2F1xsuUI/1/0100019ff0908568-8a53c114-ead6-4d0f-9e05-83fb7ef21792-000000/1PX43s7-lqVbkqZNCpfRYRJFcl1GwU1opgYFs-w58UA=452

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