Amateur Night at New Mexico Magazine: All’s Well That Ends Well, Almost

For those not in the business, it might not have seemed to be a very big deal, but for writers, editors and scholars, it was a shocking and disgusting act of government censorship that has no place in an open society. That’s why such a seemingly small event has become so important.

When the news trickled north from Las Cruces two weeks ago that the state tourism department had decided to pull an article from New Mexico Magazine written by Denise Chavez, those of us who consider freedom of speech a sacred right of all people in the world were appalled that a state official had censored the work of one of the state’s greatest and most beloved writers. Government censorship of anyone, of course, is disgraceful. Political interference in the editorial process should never go unchallenged under any circumstance.

The decision to pull Denise Chavez’s article, entitled “Libros para el Viaje” (Books for the Journey), was clearly not an editorial decision but a bald political one, hence not a matter of editorial discretion but one of government censorship, and in our New Mexico of all places, now under the authority of a Democratic governor and legislature. How could this happen?

The article was subtitled: “For centuries, travelers on the Royal Road have carried books that retain a power to inspire and to heal.” Was that the reason the article pulled, because it was “about” immigrants? Could someone in Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration pull a Trumpian absurdity like that and hope to get away with it?

The act of censorship was so egregious that the senior editor who acquired Chavez’s article for the magazine, Alicia Guzman from Truchas, resigned in protest. The piece had already been edited and typeset, and the design and layout had been completed. It was all ready for inclusion in the April edition of the magazine.

The reaction of the state’s community of writers and thinkers was instantaneous and forceful. They all knew that New Mexico Magazine should have been honored to have the work of Denise Chavez in its pages. The piece itself is beautifully rich and life affirming. It tells the story of the power of hope that reading and books have in the lives of those driven by violence, poverty and politics to move up the Jornado del Muerto looking for a better life for their families and themselves.

And, indeed, the reaction was so overwhelming, coming from all over the state, that in a few days the order to pull the article was reversed.

A terse email from head of the department of tourism, Jen Paul Schroer, stated that “Libros para el Viaje” would indeed run in the April edition of the magazine. No explanation was given about why it was pulled or why it was reinstated. Given the outpouring of support for Chavez’s work, I initially saw the reversal as a triumph of democratic lobbying. And when seven members of the southern New Mexico legislative delegation rose up in protest to protect the work of a writer considered a national treasure by many of us, that apparently sealed the reversal.

The whole episode seemed absurd, a gross example of unprofessional behavior on the part of the government leadership of the magazine. And while the story of the article has a happy ending, the honorable editor who resigned over it has not been reinstated.

And no one knows exactly for sure why it all happened. Was it a reflexive political decision that no one thought through to logical conclusion? In a letter to friends, Denise Chavez wrote that she’d been told that the tourism department was afraid of alienating southern New Mexico legislators over immigration. Doesn’t the tourism department follow Las Cruces politics?

How is it that tourism officials didn’t know who Denise Chavez is? How is it that they were unaware that she is among the state’s finest novelists, that she runs Casa Camino Real Bookstore in Las Cruces and was the director of a border book festival for years? How can a tourism department hope to tell New Mexico’s story without knowing much about New Mexico’s greatest living writers?

And what about Alicia Guzman? Denise Chavez is adamant that Guzman is the best editor “ever” at New Mexico Magazine and should become the new editor-in-chief, rather than be consigned to the ash heap of political intrigue at the Round House. I’m with her. An editor who resigns in protest to heavy-handed political movidas messing with editorial integrity is the kind of editor writers want to work for. She should be given a raise and become the boss of the outfit. I hope that happens very soon.

What worries me now is that the already shaky reputation of New Mexico Magazine, as a cook-book publication with the occasional essay (fair or not), has been dealt a terrible blow. A publication like that, which pays almost nothing, must take care of its authors, must have a reputation of being fair and open-handed and must have impeccably high professional standards that attract the best authorial talent around. New Mexico Magazine has had its high points where the best of New Mexico’s best have published their pieces about the state they loved. And the magazine has had its low points, where editorial independence and professionalism weren’t valued by the politicians who oversee the magazine and think it’s proper that they meddle in editorial affairs. This appears to be one of those lower moments.

But New Mexico Magazine has a way of rebounding. After all, how can you go wrong for long with New Mexico as your focus? Unless, of course, you haven’t bothered to learn much about it.

(V.B. Price was editor of New Mexico Magazine in the mid-1980s in the administration of Democrat Tony Anaya. He resigned in protest when politicians tried to censor his column in the Albuquerque Tribune, demanding that he stay clear of politics and of criticizing the Democratic Mayor of Albuquerque at the time.)

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it