Downwinders advocate Tina Cordova calls for nuclear disarmament in United Nations speech

Tina Cordova, founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Monday in hopes of convincing global leaders to stop nuclear weapons tests like the one that sickened generations of her family in New Mexico.

The United Nations commemorated the International Day against Nuclear Tests, which is Aug. 31, with a series of speeches decrying the human and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons testing.

Cordova spoke at the UN headquarters in New York City on the invitation of UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock. Baerbock said in a news release that she invited Cordova to “raise awareness about the effects of nuclear weapons tests explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

Cordova, in her speech, recounted the 1945 Trinity Test that she said marked “the beginning of the end for tens of thousands of people that we’ve documented, including babies that died in record numbers in the year after Trinity.” 

Cordova, who founded the consortium more than 20 years ago to advocate for compensation for New Mexico’s downwinders, did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment Monday morning. But, in a news release Aug. 27, she called the speech before global leaders “an honor of a lifetime.”

In her speech, she referenced the 2025 congressional expansion of the Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act, which included downwinders and some New Mexico uranium miners, as the first-ever acknowledgement of New Mexicans’ “sacrifice and their suffering.” Members of Congress are currently working on legislation that would further expand RECA to cover additional groups and radiation-linked cancers.

But Cordova said compensation for past harms is not enough, and urged the leaders to remember the Trinity Test 81 years ago as reason to fully abolish nuclear weapons. 

“It’s time we set our families, our children and our grandchildren free from nuclear threat,” she said. “We must commit ourselves to a world without nuclear testing, a world without nuclear weapons.”