The Angola Prison Rodeo

Apparently I can't handle a blog by myself and have to solicit writers. Luckily, my good friend Vinny wrote this lovely account of the Angola Prison Rodeo that he recently attended. So here's a little recap straight from the source:

"Yesterday I fell in love with this country all over again.

I attended a slew of human rights violations called the Angola Prison Rodeo at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Care to hazard a guess at how a "prison rodeo" works? You got it: they throw a handful of inmates into a muddy rink and turn the bulls loose. Sure, there are rules and games and strategies, but it all pretty much amounts to good old-fashioned exploitation at the expense of our society's deviants.

For the record, I cannot believe that this sort of thing goes on anywhere, let alone in a first-world country. But now that I've attended, I'm glad it does. Kudos, Louisiana.

I'm going to walk you through some of the rodeo's horrifically inventive games in just a moment, but before I do so it's important that you get a feel for the event's ambiance.

After purchasing a ticket (very reasonable at $10, by the way), you walk through a couple of alarmingly casual security checkpoints and find yourself on the business side of the barbed wire. Inside, violent criminals peddle all manners of handicrafts, from furniture to art to leatherwork. The more trustworthy convicts, ambiguously identified by their official rodeo t-shirts, mingle with the crowd. We even spoke with a murderer who'd been in prison for over 40 years. I regret to say he wasn't a very talented painter. Meanwhile, the less scrupulous inmates are kept behind a fence lined with display tables, where they pitch their wares through chain links to passersby.

Because this is Louisiana, there are also dozens of food stands and beverage kiosks (no alcohol), where the criminally culinary boil crawfish, grill hot dogs, and bake meat pies. Delicious, if suspicious.

Okay, enough periphery... onto the rodeo itself. There were eight or ten games played; I'll highlight three.

CONVICT POKER Four inmate cowboys sit at a table in the middle of the rink, playing poker. They're told to stay seated. Then an angry bull comes careening out of its chute, toppling the table and sending prisoners hurtling through the air. The object of the game is to be the last man sitting.

WILD COW MILKING These aren't your regular cows. These are massive, angry, aggressive steers, and this was definitely the most violent game played. The prisoners work in teams of two: one holds a 15-ft rope fastened to a wild cow. While he tries (and fails) to control the beast, his partner attempts to milk it. Eight teams work at once, which means that eight steer are bucking and thrashing and charging the inmates as well as each other. Total pandemonium. Needless to say, nobody won this game. After being dragged, kicked, rammed and manhandled, several inmates were carried off the field by EMS.

GUTS & GLORY The rodeo's grand finale. Angola officials tie a poker chip (a "chit") to the wildest Brahma bull present. The bull then charges into the rink, which is populated by ten or fifteen courageous prisoners tasked with removing the chit from the bull's horn. Some try flanking the animal, others try surprising it from behind. The bull effortlessly throws most of them over its shoulders, goring the unlucky ones in the process. In the end, it's a more direct approach that wins the day: one inmate manages to snatch the chit after leaping onto the bull's head. He's jettisoned into the air, but that's a small price to pay for the "glory" that is his victory.

The whole thing feels like an inbred, country-fried version of Spartacus. The winner of the final game even tosses his hard-earned chit up to the prison warden, who sits in a special box overlooking the whole violent spectacle alongside his wife and daughter.

MY THEORY What made the rodeo so thrilling? I suppose I could ramble on for pages about our species’ innate sadism or the perverse extent to which we’ve fetishized the act of punishment. But there are better reasons.

We tend to think of our violent criminals as less human – which is to say, more animal – than the rest of us. For this reason, we’ve rendered prisoners virtually indistinguishable from livestock. We herd them like cattle. We feed them slop. We confine them to cages. We tag, brand, groom, and catalogue them.

But at the Angola Rodeo, where we pit them against real, bona fide beasts, they assume a different role altogether. Foiled by their animal opponents, they are transformed into ambassadors of humanity, reflections of society, extensions of the crowd itself. The Angola Rodeo is a celebration of the divide between us and everything else. It’s a tribute to our uniqueness, and a poignant reminder that all men, independent of their crimes, share the same fundamental identity.

I could be wrong. I might even have it backwards. Perhaps it’s how similar our prisoners and livestock are that captivated the audience yesterday. But I’ll say this: in the deafening roar of the crowd during that last bout, amidst all of the applause, the cheer, the gasps, not a single spectator was rooting for the bull.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself."

-Vincent Maling

How could I not spread his tale of convict gore? Thanks to Vinny for his eloquent narrative. And for those of you seeking more, go here, here and here.