In spite of Katrina's looping right cross to New Orleans and Rita's quick left jab to Lake Charles, Louisiana's Angola Prison Rodeo -- the self-proclaimed "Wildest Show in the South" -- will be held as planned, on five successive Sundays this month at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola, some 135 miles northwest of New Orleans, boasts a 7,500-seat rodeo arena, a forty-year history of prison rodeos, and, now, overcrowding due to an influx of some 1,800 prisoners from flooded coastal correctional facilities.
Although few things in Louisiana are operating as planned this month, inmates are nevertheless participating in events like "Wild Cow Milking," "Guts and Glory," and "Convict Poker," Angola's most popular event. (Four "inmate cowboys" play poker in the center of the arena until a 2,000-pound Brahma bull is loosed into the ring; the last inmate sitting at the table wins.)
By nature, rodeos are violent, garish scenes, and Angola, built on a former antebellum cotton plantation on the Mississippi River, suffers from the hangover of an infamously violent and garish history. The prize-winning 1998 documentary The Farm: Life Inside Angola Prison reported that fully 85 percent of Angola's inmates will die within its walls, for reasons ranging from inmate vengeance to guard violence to centuries-long sentences.
Some are criticizing the prison for promoting the rodeo as if Katrina and Rita hadn't struck the state. "It doesn't surprise me," says Scott Fleming, an Oakland attorney who represents two Angola prisoners, after hearing that the rodeo will proceed as scheduled. "It reinforces the tradition that prisoners are there to serve their masters. It's part of [Louisiana's] refusal to treat them as human beings." Even the name "Angola" is an explicit reference to the African nation from which the slave ancestors of the prison's predominantly black population were taken hundreds of years ago.
The beleaguered state of Louisiana can hardly afford to waste resources on a prison rodeo, argues the Prison Activist Resource Center's Aaron Schuman. "A better use of the prison administration's time would be clarifying the story that guards left inmates to die at Orleans Parish Prison, with over 500 prisoners still unaccounted for," Schuman says. A Human Rights Watch report documented the abandonment of hundreds of prisoners at that facility in New Orleans, 517 of whom were still unaccounted for as of September 29 -- a month after Katrina flooded the jail and three days before the first rodeo event.
One rodeo-friendly prison warden was amazed by Angola's determination. "I'm surprised they're still having it in Louisiana," says Jim Willett, retired warden of the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, who, during his tenure, presided over Huntsville's own prison rodeo until it was canceled in 1986.
But Christine Corcos, professor at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, suggests that the Angola Prison Rodeo is more than just a wild spectacle, especially in the wake of the two hurricanes. The rodeo, she says, may be a "rite of passage" for grieving Louisianans looking to restore a sense of normalcy to their lives, just as the New Orleans Saints provided a symbol to rally around. The rodeo, she says, can provide this for both inmates and onlookers; fans have flocked to the prison from all over the Mississippi Delta region every October since 1965. The rodeo also allows inmates to invite the general population inside Angola's walls, to proudly showcase their talents in a public, albeit artificial, setting. For prisoners trapped in a less-than-desirable place, says Corcos, the rodeo offers inmates a stage on which they can reconcile their own post-hurricane grief.
Despite the prison's gusto, other public officials close to the event have been less brazenly enthusiastic about it. Cathy Fontenot, Angola's assistant warden and spokesperson, would not return repeated calls made to her office requesting a comment about the propriety of the rodeo's timing. And Michael Diresto, press secretary for Representative Richard Baker, whose district contains Angola, said that the congressman has no official statement about the rodeo; he also said he wasn't sure the 10-term Republican had ever attended.
But the show goes on. Indeed, the "Wildest Show in the South" drew thousands of fans, each paying $10 a head, to its first event on October 2. Angola and the rest of the state prison system, meanwhile, are still reeling from the problems wrought by the hurricanes. At one point, Angola's population of 5,100 inmates was swollen by another 1,800. The prison held women for the first time since 1961; some men had to sleep on the floor of the prison farm's hobby shop in order to make room for them. Memoranda from the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections show that jails and prisons all over the state are still struggling to house, transport, and even adequately document the arrestees and inmates in their charge. For Warden Burl Cain, the rodeo outweighs such concerns. "This," he told the Baton Rouge Advocate during the rodeo's opening Sunday, "is the first normal day we have had since Katrina."
Simon Maxwell Apter is a Prospect intern.
