For the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Costa Rican doctor Carlos Umaña, the clock that indicates a nuclear disaster is getting closer to the deadline. Concerned about a catastrophe that could affect all continents, Umaña has dedicated himself to traveling around the world to warn of the risks posed by having nuclear weapons.
A few days ago, Umaña participated in the Hay Festival Querétaro 2023, a literature, science and arts festival dedicated to raising awareness about the problems that plague the world, including war, violence and climate change.
His visit, he says, was an opportunity to inform Mexicans about his mission: the nuclear disarmament of all nations that possess this type of weapons.
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For the Nobel Prize winner, the film industry must change the discourse, since nuclear weapons are not the great hero. From the film Oppenheimer (in the image) highlights that he has generated conversation about nuclear risk, and that is profit. Photo: IMDB
But the task of raising awareness in the world about the danger of a nuclear disaster is not easy, which is why the Nobel Prize winner sees arts and culture as a window for his message to reach citizens and governments of all nations.
In an interview with EL UNIVERSAL, Umaña explained the urgency of informing people about the Apocalypse Clock, a symbolic clock created in 1947 by the University of Chicago, which uses midnight as the time at which a nuclear disaster can trigger an World crisis.
She reflected on the role of culture and the arts in raising awareness of nuclear danger, on the influence of cinema on the collective imagination of nuclear weapons, and on the role of feminism in contemporary governments.
What does your participation in the Hay Festival represent in your mission to inform about nuclear risk?
It means one more opportunity to spread our message and raise awareness, it is a huge platform to make our work known. I am very excited about all the attention that my cause and I are receiving, it is very exciting to talk to so many people interested in this work.
What is the urgency of talking about nuclear weapons?
The urgency is enormous, high, very high, like never before in history. It is important, given the danger the world is in, that people first become aware and understand what a nuclear weapon is and what it represents, and then, together, work to eliminate them. To do this we must stigmatize this weaponry, change social discourses, there must be many of us who are informed, we have the mission of making people open their eyes and get involved in the issue.
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Through culture and art can we become aware of this problem?
What an interesting question. Of course you can do it. I will tell you a story, an experience I had in 2002: I went to Japan, to Nagoya, to a course on epidemiological research, I stayed for four months and as part of the course we traveled to the city of Hiroshima and visited the Peace Museum. Something that marked my life and that I remember was seeing the paintings made by survivors of the atomic bomb. Art transforms you, it makes you understand things that logical thinking may not grasp, it is another dimension of experiences that makes us understand the world and reality in different ways, it makes us understand what is happening and can transform us. Culture has an essential function, and that is to communicate. But it is not ordinary communication, but rather it brings us closer, it allows us to communicate in profound ways.
What role has cinema played in the conception of nuclear weapons?
There have been films that have addressed the issue, such as “Independence Day” or “Avengers”, where they paint nuclear weapons as the great hero, arguing that an evil race of aliens has come to conquer humanity and peace. it comes with a nuclear weapon, but that’s Hollywood playing out otherness, or in other words, it’s okay to kill an enemy who is different. But what really happened was that, in 1945, the Japanese were the aliens, they were the others. There are people who still say that they deserved to receive the atomic bomb. A Korean acquaintance told me that he does not suffer for the children, for the elderly and for the mothers who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What did you think of Oppenheimer?
It’s a good movie. But it is just a narrative thread that sees the events from a mere point of view. The good thing is that it generates conversations, ordinary people are talking about nuclear risk and that is something that was difficult to achieve before, even in the media; That awareness on the part of the people is an important element because what we need is to change the discourse, so that nuclear weapons are not seen as a privilege, but as a danger and a threat.
Does the war between Russia and Ukraine accelerate the risk of a nuclear disaster?
Definitely yes. The Apocalypse Clock is a symbolic clock that measures in minutes to midnight the risk of global destruction. They are not literal minutes or seconds, it is a way of measuring risk, of conceiving it to understand how close or far we are from a catastrophe. Let me give more context: in 1963, just after the Cuban missile crisis, it was seven minutes to midnight; in 83, less than three minutes away. After the Cold War, the risks dropped to 14 minutes, at one point it reached 17, but today we are at 90 seconds. It is the highest risk in history.
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How close are we to nuclear war?
We live in a context (Ukraine and Russia) with a real war, where there are explicit threats, you do not know how the other person, the one who can decide whether to detonate a nuclear warhead, is going to react. It is very easy for miscalculations and misinterpretations to occur, and if there is a nuclear detonation, accidental or on purpose, it would not be much of a possibility for a large-scale nuclear war.
As a doctor, can you describe a world ravaged by nuclear war?
Difficult question. But if. We already have the precedent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the most worrying thing is radiation, as it causes degradation of tissues and organs. Many people would die alone and in enormous pain. If thousands of warheads detonated, we are talking about the destruction of hundreds of cities, tens of millions of deaths, the destruction of the ozone layer until reaching nuclear winter, years of darkness and cold due to the large amount of smoke in the stratosphere.
Is nuclear disarmament possible?
It is not easy, but it is possible and we have made progress in stigmatizing nuclear weapons, in changing their face, in exposing their nature. It is the ultimate evil and we have changed, but it requires enormous social support, to change the collective imagination. But the fact that today there are nine countries with nuclear weapons is a symptom of a nuclear disease. We must change the paradigms, like here in Mexico, where I have seen that the role of women in politics has changed in recent years. It is no coincidence that, with more women in politics, progress is seen in nuclear disarmament, because a society that elects a woman to represent it speaks of the acquisition of new values.
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2023-09-23 16:33:56
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