To visit silence after the blast, 2023 - 2024
The film Fat Man and Little Boy tells the story of the Manhattan Project. It was shot in the late 1980s in San Francisco, California, as well as in Mexico City, and some places between Durango and Coahuila. For the film, a whole set was build to recreate, in its entirety, the Los Alamos research complex located in New Mexico.
At some point during the 1970s, between Durango and Coahuila, a test missile fell very close to these locations. The projectile was originally intended for impact on the White Sands Test Facility—part of the Los Alamos complex in New Mexico—the same one that was recreated in the film in a small town near Bermejillo, Durango, called San Juan de Buenavista, the closest to the impact site.
The repercussions of that incident left a small town in devastation, and it was never spoken of again. These are the proofs.
After more than 30 years, I went to those places; places where silence became an everlasting witness. I found some ruins too beautiful, yet unkown, that remained hidden deep in the mountains.
People from the surroundings told me that they never really went there since the first one who did, always returned with their skin burning; they thought it was a gate to hell.
WHAT YOU SEE HERE, WHAT YOU DO HERE, WHAT YOU HEAR HERE, WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE, LET IT STAY HERE. Those are the instructions that those involved in the Manhattan Project were told to follow. When I visited the ruins of that town, I found some old signs that I used to write down the same mantra that could be seen on the facilities related to the Manhattan Project.
These are dyptics displayed as forensic evidence, showing photographies I took when I visited those ruins, sparce internet pictures from that same place and declassified U.S. government documents from the Project Manhattan mixed with the original script of Fatman and Little Boy.