The Desert as Junkyard: The Perils of Proximity in the Documentary Deadly Metal and Two Novels Concerning the Cobalt 60 Accident in Ciudad Juárez

Abstract:In 1984 in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a cobalt radioactive therapy machine was dismantled, melted, and forged into iron materials that created a binational nuclear fallout emergency known as the “cobalt 60 accident,” the worst atomic incident in Latin America to date. I study this accident from the perspective of the desert as a site for “wastelanding”—as being a place rendered pollutable and discardable. Ciudad Juárez has been seen as America’s backyard, a city hungry for scrap-heap materials. I analyze cultural products, such as a documentary, videos, and two novels that describe the incident, highlighting the corruption and lack of an exhaustive report that confronts the official versions and conspiracy theories.