The Hollywood blockbuster Oppenheimer completely ignores the tragic plight of the local people who lived near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a local has said. 

The film chronicles the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his work creating nuclear weapons.

Much of his research was conducted in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - a part of the US that the film depicts as being deserted.

In fact, it was home to people whose families had lived there for generations but were summarily turfed off their land to make space for the laboratory.

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer.

“In the actual spot where the Los Alamos National Labs were built, there were two dozen families and farmers and ranchers, basically living off that land and they were forcibly removed from that land by the US Army,” local woman and journalist Alisa Lynn Valdés told Moncrieff.

When the US Government seized their land through compulsory purchase orders, locals were promised compensation - but often it failed to materialise.

“They promised to pay them [the Hispanic and Native peoples] seven dollars an acre and they promised the white owners of a big… ranch $200 an acre,” Ms Lynn Valdés said.

“But in many cases, they didn’t even pay the Native American or Hispano landowners at all.”

Road in New Mexico on highway street with sign for National Laboratory and Department of Energy

New Mexico only became a US State in 1912 and in many parts it remained culturally very similar to its Mexican neighbours to the south.

This meant many locals were ill-equipped to stand up for themselves when the US Government told them they were buying their land.

“The people who had been living on that land, far predated their new nationality that had been imposed on them about 30 years before this happened.

“So, many of the old people there didn’t even speak English yet and they were not provided with translators when they were told to leave their land.”

Most did not move far but the move ushered in a period of what Ms Lynn Valdés describes as a period of “great marginalisation and impoverishment.”

Some went to the new Los Alamos National Laboratory and asked for work - but they were often given extremely dangerous jobs working with toxic chemicals.

“A friend of mine has a photo of her father working over a vat of beryllium and his two white supervisors have full moon suit protective gear on and he and [the other] Hispanic and Native men were not given that kind of gear,” Ms Lynn Valdés.

Exposure to beryllium can cause berylliosis - a disease that can make breathing difficult, trigger fatigue and pain in a person’s joints.

“A whole generation of men - her father included - who died of berylliosis because they were knowingly exposed to this extremely toxic chemical by the people who commandeered their land,”  Ms Lynn Valdés said.

“[My friend] filed a class action lawsuit against the labs on behalf of her Dad and the other people who died in this way and she won.

“Now, that’s the story Hollywood should be telling.”

Main image: Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer