New Mexico congressional leaders and advocates met with other federal lawmakers in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to urge reauthorizing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
About 30 Native American advocates left for the capital on Sunday on a 37-hour bus trip.
Among them was Carol Etcitty-Roger from Shiprock. She talked about her father who worked in a mine in Cove, Arizona and how the uranium radiation caused her to have cancer, twice.
“I tell my children, I don't know how much time I have, but I tell them what's good and what's best for them,” she said.
Now the rest of her family must get tested and her 19-year-old grandson has already been diagnosed with cancer.
“So the doctors are telling us to get all our children tested,” she said. “The whole family down to babies right now we're going through tests. My whole family is going through tests. So it's so sad, and it just hurts me.”
RECA doesn’t cover miners after 1971 or New Mexicans exposed in the Trinity blast. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill last year to include them. But House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Democratic New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Lujan, who worked Republicans to pass the bill, said this is unacceptable.
“The United States of America needs to treat these people better,” he said.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said these workers sacrificed for the United States.
“And so our miners back post 71 all the way to the 1990s they went into those mines not knowing what they were going to go into, but they knew that it was for national security. They knew that is going to keep this country safe,” he said.
The Utah News Dispatch reports the Congressional Budget Office originally estimated the extension and expansion of RECA could cost around $15o billion but more recent estimates put that figure at between $50 and $60 billion over 10 years. The RECA program has only paid out $2.6 billion since the 1990’s, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Representative Gabe Vasquez says that as representatives, they will continue to fight to reauthorize RECA.
“Because I can tell you that the people that are standing up here, that are fighting for this, we don't represent the government,” he said. “We represent the people, and you are the people, and so we're here to represent you.”
Advocates from New Mexico delivered a letter to Speaker Johnson Wednesday morning and will continue to hold demonstrations and ceremonies in D.C. through Thursday.
Support from the coverage comes from the Thornburg Foundation.
