Wide-Open Desert: A Queer History of New Mexico by Jordan Biro Walters (review)

Reviewed by: Wide-Open Desert: A Queer History of New Mexico by Jordan Biro Walters Wesley G. Phelps Wide-Open Desert: A Queer History of New Mexico. By Jordan Biro Walters. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023. Pp. 286. Notes, index.) Does New Mexico have a queer history? And if so, what can it tell us about both New Mexico history and U.S. queer history more broadly? In Wide-Open Desert, historian Jordan Biro Walters offers intriguing answers to these questions through a remarkable and important exploration of the Land of Enchantment's queer past. Expertly combining political and cultural history, Biro Walters argues that queer cultural production laid the groundwork for civil rights activism in the state. Centering the voices of Pueblo, Navajo, Neuvomexicanx, and White LGBTQ people, the book offers significant new insights into the role that cultural activism has played in the struggle for queer equality and should become required reading for anyone interested in U.S. queer history. Wide-Open Desert begins at the end of World War I when Taos and Santa Fe began their journeys to becoming internationally recognized artist communities. During the following two decades, queer artists put down roots in these locales and created an environment of sexual freedom. At the same time, new migrants often forced their own gender and sexual [End Page 230] ideologies on people native to those places, an imperialist project that many Indigenous residents resisted. In 1929, queer artist communities and their allies began an unsuccessful battle against a censorship provision included in the proposed Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that prohibited sexually explicit material from entering the country. Although Congress included a modified version of the provision in the final bill, cultural activists were able to develop an ideology of sexual privacy that would prove useful in subsequent battles. The national security state created during World War II, much of which was physically located in New Mexico because of the Manhattan Project, disrupted many of the queer communities that had formed since 1920. An ideology of sexual privacy, which emphasized personal agency in choosing what to keep to oneself and what to make public, quickly gave way to an ideology of secrecy, which mandated that queer individuals stay in the closet to avoid severe consequences. The new secrecy regime of the war years, which extended into the Cold War period, forced New Mexico's queer culture underground and weakened whatever political clout it had established. The consequences were immediate as queer communities, weakened by the imposition of a heteronormative brand of citizenship, failed to persuade the New Mexico legislature to repeal its discriminatory sodomy statute in 1963. Yet queer migration to New Mexico continued through the 1960s, and by the end of the decade these new migrants had established strong queer communities all over the state in both urban and rural areas. The 1970s and 1980s saw the return of open dialogue in New Mexico about sexual privacy and liberation, but this time the discussions were more sensitive to the ways race and gender complicated queer expression. Wide-Open Desert is a welcome and necessary addition to the field of U.S. queer history from a talented historian and author. With a wide source base composed of archival materials, government documents, newspapers, oral history interviews, art, literature, and even erotic photography, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of New Mexico, queer history, Indigenous history, art history, or political and cultural history. It should prove especially useful in both undergraduate and graduate courses that deal with these topics. Wesley G. Phelps University of North Texas Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association