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.