† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

LSP Angola Prison Rodeo, At the Intersections of Abuse
by nancy a heitzeg

For Huey and many more….

As October approaches, it is that time again, time for the now twice-yearly extravagnaza known as the “Wildest Show in the South”. The famous/infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola Prison Rodeo, a tradition that spans nearly 50 years.

We have written much here about LSP Angola – a prison I have visited many times. Angola was and is still is very much a plantation, right in the heart of the Incarceration Capital of the World. At 18,000 acres and 6300+ inmates, it is the largest prison in the US – the only prison with its own zip code. Mostly black men are still maintaining the same agricultural activity – planting, hoeing, picking cotton and other crops by hand – that slaves did originally. And they are doing so as captives who are compensated for their back-breaking labor with mere pennies per hour. The very same practices and social control mechanisms that existed under slavery persist – just under a new name.

Angola is the site of many overt and hidden horrors. The Death House, currently the subject of a Federal lawsuit as inmates have claimed that temperatures are unconstitutionally cruel, rising at times to heat indices of more than 150 degrees. An execution process that has been shrouded in secrecy and is now under legal challenge for vague drug protocols. Camp J, where as many as 20% of Angola’s population are kept in solitary confinement. The on-going saga of the Angola 3 – one now released and two housed elsewhere, but forever associated with the extreme brutality of “The Farm“. And more.

One of the additionally disconcerting aspects of Angola is the cavalier attitude towards cruelty and death, and in some cases, celebration of it. Warden Burl Cain, for example, is proud that the infamous Red Hat Cellblock is a National Historical site. Prouder still that a guard tower and a cell circa 1930 are on their way to the Smithsonian, even though they are there to represent “the history of African-American oppression and incarceration in the United States.”

In this sort of climate, it is no surprise then, that perhaps no other Angola “tradition” is loved as much ( or nearly as profitable) as the “Guts and Glory” of the Rodeo.

Risk and Reward at the LSP Angola Rodeo

The rodeo got its start in the 1960s – informally, in a history that is now largely lost. What were the motives? Entertainment or just more degradation and danger? It is hard to know, but perhaps as in all things Angola, some of each. Eventually the event was opened to the public, and under the watch of the profiteering Warden Cain, became immensely popular. Every weekend in October and now April too, the 10,000 seat arena is sold out as spectators watch inmates risk their lives for a few fleeting seconds of glory and a $100 prize. (See the Times Picayune for photos of the April 2013 events, and more at Prison Photography)

Besides last year’s injury, [Johnny] Brooks had, after his first ride in his first rodeo more than a decade ago, been kicked in the back by the bull that threw him. He had then watched another convict thrown immediately in front of the chute. The bull found the man on the ground and shook him between its horns, cracking his spine-the man was left a quadriplegic, living in the Department of Corrections’ version of a nursing home. A few years later, Brooks had broken his arm, and the year before last the flesh just below his eye had been sliced open by a bull’s horn. Rodeo anywhere is a dangerous sport, bull riding its most extreme event. The prison staff who oversaw Brooks on the range crew, and who organized Angola’s rodeo, were quick to remind me of this. Brooks’s medical history would be about the gentlest on the pro tour. But many pros enter two rodeos in a weekend, ride several bulls every week, hundreds in a year. Each year Brooks mounted exactly four. His odds were not gentle at all.

~ God of the Rodeo: Search for Hope, Faith and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana’s Angola Prison by Daniel Bergner, 1998

Although the Angola Rodeo claims to a “professional rodeo” staffed by rodeo circuit clowns and animals, the events that make it so popular include high risk ( and often demeaning) events that are not officially sanctioned by The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. These include:

• “Grand Entry – Angola Rough Riders enter the arena at full gallop and colors are presented.

• Bust Out  – All six chutes open simultaneously, releasing six angry bulls, with temporarily attached inmate cowboys.  The last man to remain on the bull wins the event.

• Bareback Riding – Riders are expected to keep one hand in the air, and must stay on the horse for eight seconds to qualify.

• Wild Horse Race  – Six wild horses are simultaneously released into the arena with short ropes dragging behind them.  Three-man teams attempt to grab the ropes and hold the horse long enough for a team member to mount.  The first team to cross the finish line while still on top of the horse is the winner.

• Bull-Dogging – The animal is placed in a chute, with two cowboys positioned just outside the chute.  Their job is to wrestle the animal to the ground as quickly as possible.  The team with the best time earns points toward the coveted “All-around Cowboy” award.

• Buddy Pick-Up – This event requires one man on a horse (riding bareback) to navigate the length of the arena, pick up another inmate who is standing on a barrel, and race back to the finish line.

• Wild Cow Milking  –Teams of inmate cowboys chase the animals around the arena trying to extract a little milk.  The first team to bring milk to the judge wins the prize.

• Bull Riding – This dangerous and wide open event is what the fans come to see.  Inexperienced inmates sit on top of a 2,000 pound Brahma bull.  To be eligible for the coveted “All-Around Cowboy” title, a contestant must successfully complete the ride (6 seconds).  The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rules govern this event.

• Convict Poker  –It’s the ultimate poker game, and even winning has a price.  Four inmate cowboys sit at a table in the middle of the arena playing a friendly game of poker.  Suddenly, a wild bull is released with the sole purpose of unseating the poker players.  The last man remaining seated is the winner.

• Guts & Glory – A chit (poker chip) is tied to the meanest, toughest Brahma bull available.  The object here is to get close enough to the bull in order to snatch the chit.  This is the last event of the day, and perhaps the most exciting.”

Save for the women’s barrel racing competition and a crew of sheep- herding monkeys riding border collies (yes you read that correctly), the inmates provide the entertainment and endure the heavy human risk. You get the picture.

The Inmates: The Question of Informed Consent and “Choice”

Much coverage of the rodeo emphasizes the seemingly positive aspects, while down-playing “the controversy”. Certainly, the benefits are clearer for those who participate in the surrounding Arts and Crafts Fair, selling products they have made, everything from leather work to paintings. It is an opportunity for minimal interaction with the public, a chance to take pride in one’s work , and earn some money in a  draconian prison economy where the typical wage is 2 cents an hour. Even so, the prison still takes a 20% cut.

For those who take on a 2000 pound raging bull, it is a different matter. Coverage here too romanticizes the rodeo, focusing on the ostensible “freedom” inmates feel when in competition. The prison administration says the rodeo provides inmates “with an opportunity for positive behavior changes.” Inmates quoted in press pieces invariably deny any knowledge of the controversies – who could be surprised ? – and describe the long waits for participation.

The inmate rodeo, a thirty-two-year-old tradition that year, 1996, was held every Sunday in October and was billed by the prison as “The Wildest Show in the South.” The public was invited through Angola’s gates, lured by write-ups in the fun section of the local paper promising untrained convicts “thrown every which way.” The men could not practice. Many, unlike Brooks and a few others who worked with horses as part of their prison jobs, had never so much as ridden a pony at a childhood street fair. They were not given the protective vests the pros wear to save themselves from shattered ribs and punctured lungs when the bronco kicks or the bull stomps down. Broken shoulders or wrists or ribs occurred daily. One past rider, petrified on his horse in a slapstick event called “Buddy Pick-Up” had died of a heart attack.

~ God of the Rodeo: Search for Hope, Faith and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana’s Angola Prison by Daniel Bergner, 1998

But if allowed, inmates also offer a critique of the rodeo. On one of my visits there, the inmate Trustee who worked the Museum/Gift Shop had plenty to say, much of which is verified by common sense and a handful of other sources. He described several inmate deaths at the rodeo (including that of Johnny Brooks in 1999, gored by a bull one year after being featured in God of the Rodeo). Additionally there are extreme injuries and on-going chronic conditions as a result. Younger, newer, less wise inmates especially are encouraged to participate for the lure of the small prize money and the moment of “freedom”.

The Warden needs participants for the highly lucrative rodeo; it nets anywhere from $450,000 to $1 million per weekend with all proceeds going to Cain’s pet evangelical Chapel building project. (These are ticket sales figures alone – there is no accounting of revenue made from the sale of rodeo DVDs and other merchandise.) So the rodeo is highly touted with no  real discussion of the risks, no training or protective gear for inmates. And of course, a required signature waiving LSP from all liability for injuries or deaths that may result.

Yes, participation is “voluntary”, but what meaning does consent even have in the context of  “The Last Slave Plantation“? What does “choice” or “risk” mean here for men who are looking at life? And by what standards can one really judge those who decide to roll the dice?

The Animals: Involuntary and Provoked Participation

Absent in all coverage of The Angola Prison Rodeo is a critique of the conditions faced by the other absolutely non consensual participants, the Rodeo animals. Angola has the same uneasy and exploitative relationship with animals as it does with its’ human inmates. Now they will say they love the horses, but bottom line, all animals exist there for labor and profit. The breeding operations where horses and dogs are bred and cross-bred for sale, often to law enforcement agencies. The Black Angus cattle sold for top dollar, while inmates are fed a cheaper grade of meat and profits are pocketed by the prison. The mules that work the fields, the horses that carry armed overseers to supervise inmate slave labor or haul the dead, via carriage, to their numbered graves at Point Lookout. The wolf-dog hybrids that patrol the perimeter and increasingly take the place of human guards.

L.S.P. Last Slave Plantation” Littell [Harris] said. Below him the Rough Riders, the mounted inmate drill team, galloped into the arena. Waving in the breeze above their heads were the flags they carried: the state’s, the country’s, the penitentiary’s, and, in this prison whose inmate population was 77 percent black, whose guards were two-thirds white, and whose administration couldn’t have been more pale, the Confederacy’s. There were two of those flags, with the blue X and the thirteen stars and the red background, one carried by a black man. The crowd was virtually all white. “Do you see this?” Littell leaned toward the inmate beside him. “That fucking idiot” The next man down the bleachers answered, “It ain’t nothing but a piece of cloth” And the prayer began…The black guys hurt him the most, but the whites–who made up about half the rodeo’s participants–sickened him, too. They were all willing to price their lives at zero. They were all willing to turn themselves into a joke. “Waiting in Department of Corrections bucking chute number one, serving lllllife…” he heard the mounted emcee (like the clowns, hired from the pro circuit) announce the six riders in the first event. “Waiting in Department of Corrections bucking chute number two, serving LLLLLIFE…”

~ God of the Rodeo: Search for Hope, Faith and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana’s Angola Prison by Daniel Bergner, 1998

In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is no concern expressed for the non-human participants in this spectacle. And although the rodeo animals are “professionals”, not LSP property, this is surely no guarantee of humane treatment en-route or during. Rodeo is opposed by all major animal rights/welfare organizations from Humane Society to the Animal Legal Defense Fund to PeTA for the following reasons:

• Rodeos “typically cause torment and stress to animals; expose them to pain, injury, or even death; and encourage an insensitivity to and acceptance of the inhumane treatment of animals in the name of sport.”

• Animals are transported in overcrowded trucks and trailers, and they may be confined for as long as 24 hours without being properly fed or watered, according to the “rules” of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). There is no protection for rodeo animals under the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act.

• Rodeo animals are provoked into acting more “wild”. Tools of provocation include the “hotshot,” an electric prod used on the animal while captive in the chute, metal spurs and “bucking straps” – often augmented with metal burrs or other irritants that burn the animal’s abdomen, cinch the testicles and cause him to “buck”,

• Rodeos have stunningly high rates of injury and death for animals. Rodeos mean constant trauma for the animals forced to participate. They suffer broken ribs, backs, and legs, torn tails, punctured lungs, internal organ damage, ripped tendons, torn ligaments, snapped necks, and  endure agonizing deaths.

There is no way of gauging the animal death/injury toll at the Angola Prison Rodeo. Evidence of inmate injury and death is scarcely available and largely anecdotal, so why should we expect any information on the other disposable parties in this exhibition?

What is clear is that there is suffering, domination, humiliation and death – all around. And it is billed and bought and sold and consumed as entertainment.

 At the Intersections of Abuse

What sort of Lower Rung of Hell event is this – where a primarily white probably racist rodeo crowd delights in the mutual torment of mostly Black captive inmates and terrified/tortured animals?

The LSP Angola Rodeo is a Gladiator School meets Minstrel Show horror which links the worst oppressions together in bold relief. It is a slave era sort of racialized spectacle pitting dehumanized men versus non-human animals –  one that rests on the belief that deep insecurity and fear can be overcome through commodification and caging. And ultimately, it is a public display of the white supremacist patriarchy at its’ most base —  a display which reveals the relentless urge to dominate, degrade, exploit and imperil those who, whatever species, are defined as “Other”.

“How did you enjoy the Convict Poker, ladies and gentlemen?” the emcee asked. There was some applause. And laughter. I’m sure some of the reaction to the event was electrified, exhilarated, the thrill of watching men in terror made forgivable because the men were murderers. I’m sure some of it was racist (See that n%$&er move), some disappointed (that there had been no goring), and some uneasy (with that very same disappointment)…But for now, as the Guts & Glory began, my eyes turned to Terry Hawkins, serving his life sentence for murdering his boss in an argument sparked by a demand that Terry work late on his stepdaughter’s birthday. Already his participation in the rodeo was a bad joke: The job had been in a slaughterhouse; he had hacked into his employer’s head and neck with a meat-ax. But Terry didn’t see any strangeness or irony in his continued association with cattle.

~ God of the Rodeo: Search for Hope, Faith and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana’s Angola Prison by Daniel Bergner, 1998

In all my visits to Angola, I have never made it to the Rodeo. I could not bear it. Here’s the plain truth: as much as you all know I am committed to the liberation of those inmates, I am equally devoted to the liberation of the animals involved. As I call for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, I call for the abolition of the animal exploitation industrial complex as well.

How could it be otherwise?

In the comments sections of various Times Picayune articles on the troubles at Angola, readers repeatedly ask: “Why do they have to treat those inmates like dogs?”

Here are my questions: “Why do we have to treat dogs like dogs?” And if we did not, then what would be our model for the “dehumanization” of people? What would any longer be our justification, our theory, our practice?

It is a hard and unpopular truth to say that all oppressions are connected, to say that our treatment of other species and the Earth herself has served as the paradigm for our oppression of peoples. But it has.

It is a harder and even more unpopular truth to say that all oppressions must be undone and undone together. The lust for the false power derived from relations of domination – directed anywhere – is at the root.

What if the prison industrial complex and the social inequality which under girds it were somehow undone? What would prevent the lingering desire to crate the sow, cage the bird, chain the dog, beat the horse, gore the ox from erupting – again towards us – in some newly imagined and monstrous application?

There many sad lessons revealed at LSP Angola. The lesson of The World Famous Angola Rodeo is this:

Open the Cages, and Open them All.

 

 

 

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