Chow

A Collage of Dining Experiences at the Penitentiary of New Mexico, 1980

Aug 31, 2023

Prolegomenon

When its doors opened in 1956, the Penitentiary of New Mexico was deemed the most modern and progressive correctional institution in the world. Interim Deputy Warden Dr. W.M. Brown told the press the new prison would allow inmates to receive their high school diplomas, their college degrees, and would use the Dale Carnegie Course to aid inmates in returning to civilization. Warden Brown went on to proclaim that no penal institution on the planet had a more advanced approach to rehabilitation than that in New Mexico.

Less than twenty-five years later, the Penitentiary of New Mexico became host to the most violent and destructive prison riot in American history. For thirty-six hours, inmates tortured and beat guards. Execution squads formed, some killing at random, others selecting snitches for beheadings, hangings, and death by acetylene torch. When it was over, thirty-three lay dead and another 200 were injured.

In the months after the riot, the FBI and the New Mexico State Police interviewed hundreds of inmates. One of the more outstandingly bad aspects of life at Old Main, inmates told them, was the food. Here are some selections from testimonies.

Detail

It’s the first thing they assign you when you come to the prison. Unless you go to school. Get in school and they don’t put you in the kitchen. But if you don’t want to go to school, they put you in the kitchen.

*

I’ve been through the orientation about five times. I know it word by word. The warden’s got the same rap. And the preacher. And everybody trying to tell you…“Yeah, well, you got a real good job waiting for you in the kitchen.”

*

Q: Do a lot of people see being assigned in the kitchen as some kind of punishment?

A: Yeah.

Q: So if you’re working there and you figure that this is punishment you’re not really…

A: You’re not really working in there. They just put you there to work.

*

The kitchen should be an honorable job. Put guys in there that want to work in the kitchen. Not for punishment. A lot of guys would rather go to lockup before they go to the kitchen.

*

You’re not supposed to take a mechanic and put him in there as a cook if he’s never been around a pot in his fucking life.

*

I noticed also that there’s nothing to do in this penitentiary. There is nothing to do. They try to put you in the kitchen, and the thing that differs here from California institutions is that people working in the kitchen here—it’s like a punishment.

*

You ain’t never going to get any better food out of these retards down here. We got one guy that’s supposed to be a hotshot chef, old Byers. He just don’t give a fuck. He don’t give a damn what we got to eat. I’ll tell you what: I was here for three years and I don’t believe I ever have got a dessert besides pudding. For three years. Now that’s way out of line.

*

I’ve been working for the food services for about three or four years, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be, you know. Really dirty dirty places [sic]. I seen some really bad people in there. They don’t take care of themselves. They’ll stick their hands in a mop bucket or something and go right back out and stick it in the food. It makes a person not want to eat.

*

I’ve been in the bakery as Assistant Baker. I’ve worked in the vegetable room. I’ve worked in the potato room. I’ve been a flour porter. I’ve been on the cook shift and I’ve been on any job you can think of in that kitchen. First thing that’s wrong with the penitentiary is that kitchen is used for disciplinary procedures. You’re released from lockup the first place they’ll give you a job is in that kitchen. You give em 90-days clear record in the kitchen and then they’ll consider giving you a new job.

Breakfast

One of the of the of the of the herd, and I’ve seen I’ve seen I’ve seen them get food and save it, store it for three, four, five days and then they come out and serve it again as a leftover. I’ve seen them prepare oatmeal, which I would think is the simplest thing to prepare and serve, and it come out like in in balls, you know, curdled up, you know. I’ve seen milk that they’ve served sour. I’ve seen I’ve seen I’ve seen where people have shown the steward that there’s either a roach in the food or some kind of insect. I’ve seen them just scoop it out and throw it out and that’s it and continue to boil and serve that food.

*

I picked up a spoon of oatmeal and I found a cockroach in there and I lost my appetite.

*

When Byers first come in here, in seventy-two or -three, right in there somewhere, he come to work one morning and he didn’t have nothing to fix for breakfast. They [administrators and correctional officers] stole. They stole so much down there, he didn’t have no food left. That’s how bad it was. [Warden] Rodriguez was looking a little heavier at the time.

*

I work from two in the morning to eleven in the morning milking cows and I get three cold pancakes, no syrup, no butter, no nothing. What kind of meal is that?

*

People eat it because they’re hungry. But most of the food, I would say, there’s always conflict. Like in the milk from the dairy, you find dead rats. They’d see those things and then they’d fall into the milk and they’d be swimming. Sometimes they’d have to get them out and, you know, that’s for people that have been working there, you know, guys working in the kitchen. Open a container, there’s a mouse in there.

Starch

Black spots on the potatoes. Whole potatoes unpeeled, not washed. Meat with bones in em. Rocks in the beans. Chipped a tooth on one of them. Never got nothing done [orthodontically] about it.

*

One day they were giving out cake and I got me a piece of cake, you know, on my tray. And there was a bunch of little, like, mice footprints all over the frosting, man. And there was rat doo-doo all over it too, man. And sometimes you’re eating salad and you find cockroaches in it. Or else, you know, just different stuff. Flies in the milk.

*

The cakes and bread and stuff—they just have them in the bakery in the back. They don’t have them covered or nothing. Mice and everything crawl all over them. Eat it.

*

The bread—it’s like chewing gum.

*

The inmates, they wanna make something good for the other inmates to enjoy. Like they wanna make enchiladas, stuff like that. The stewards don’t let them do that. They have Jell-O in the icebox. It’s been there a whole week. They put it out there on the line. They’ll eat it, no problem.

*

They used to just get the salad and make it and put it on the cabinet and sometimes they would leave it overnight. Open, you know. And all these cockroaches would be climbing in it and walking all around in it and climbing out, you know. And I used to tell the guy in the kitchen about it and he said, “Don’t worry about it.”

*

This is no bullshit. I found bugs in my food two or three times. Green bugs. And sometimes you find hair and all that. You don’t eat after that, you know.

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Turkey ala King

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about our famous food poisoning day?

*

I pulled some time working in the mess hall and I observed quite a bit of foul treatment of the food. One time in particular I observed a certain staff member pull out a load of turkey that was supposed to be used for Turkey ala King. This turkey looked real bad. It looked green and blue. There was a few of us that were skeptical about eating it but he insisted that the meat was all right, that it’d just been out of the freezer for a little bit. Apparently, the meat was quite bad because I believe half the population attained food poisoning the next morning.

*

It was chicken and rice or something. It was chicken stew or something. I don’t know what it was called. It looked absolutely horrible. When they were making them, they forgot to clean the pots. The big kettle drums and stuff. So they just dumped everything in there, cooked up the stew and served it. They should know all about botulism and stuff like that.

*

It was Turkey ala King.

*

Turkey ala King or something like that, and the food was, it wasn’t enough of it and it just wasn’t prepared right and then about a week or two later they attempted to serve us some of that same turkey, which a lot of us refused to eat. And I’ve got a cousin that was working there in the kitchen and he goes, “Well, don’t eat that turkey.” He said somebody found a big old worm in it, man.

*

That’s why we had food poisoning. It was about, when was it? January? Around there. We had food poisoning because they had that chicken, that Turkey ala King. They had it sitting out in there for about three weeks.

*

There was about 800 of us that had to report to the hospital to get some sort of medication because we all got diarrhea, stomach cramps, the whole bit.

*

I still get sick. I’m still sick.

*

To tell you the truth, I’m kind of scared to eat. It kind of scares me, because it hurts. It’s a type of food poisoning that hurts.

Steak Dinner

They have good cattle at the farm. I’m a cowboy, and they have good cattle. They take good cattle and they sell it to auction. And then they buy a bunch of broken down cattle. Every time they have us steak, I give it away or bypass it.

*

The quality of food here isn’t okay. I think the money they’re getting to buy the food here, a whole lot of it never gets to the kitchen. I’ve been to the farm twice in Los Lunas and I worked right across the road from the slaughterhouse out there and I’ve seen them kill cancerite cows and I’ve seen those cows sick. I’ve lived on a ranch. I was born on a ranch. I know when a cow is sick and I’ve seen those cows with broken hips and cancerite and they kill them and they bring them up here and they feed it to us and I’ve ate rubber-band steak here for eight and a half years and that’s exactly what it is. It’s rubber-bank steak.

*

I’m tellin you what I know. You can check my records and find out. I been on the Honor Farm. I worked in the slaughterhouse. I have a vast knowledge of farm equipment, animals, been raised on a farm and worked on farms all my life, okay? When I was on that Honor Farm the first time, in 1967, I saw the animals that they were raising out there for the purpose of slaughter. Beef stock. With my own eyes, because I was workin out there, saw that same beef stock loaded up on the truck and went twice myself with the officer to Clovis, New Mexico, to the auctions. I watched him sell that prime beef that was raised on the Honor Farm and purchase Grade Prime C or three rate dairy stock and brought back to this penitentiary for slaughter, and that beef was sent to this institution for the preparation of food services. So now people talkin about we get steaks, people talk about what we eat here—they haven’t seen the quality of what we are getting.

*

You take beef stock, Grade A beef stock, you take it to an auction you sell it for Grade A beef stock, right, you sell it for whatever the goin rate is at the auction. Those scales on their prices at that auction are set from a minimum to a maximum and the minimum is above average, as far as price goes. Now when you have your second category you have either 1, 2 or 3 or A, B or C. A bein the best, 1 being the best, 2 bein worse, B bein worse, C bein the lowest quality and 3 bein the lowest quality. 1-2-3 and A-B-C coincide with each other. If you take Grade A beef stock to a cattle auction and you sell it and you turn around and you buy Grade C dairy stock, then you’re gonna have an excess of money. If none of this is bein turned in to your accountant—accounting department here at this penitentiary—and those funds are bein placed in that man’s pocket, then no one ever knows the difference except these people immediately involved with it, the inmates and other employees of that Honor Farm.

*

I work in the butcher shop and I learned to judge meat and I know of the meat they send up from the farm, it’s meat but its old range fed beef, it’s not grain fed or anything like that, and that’s not quality meat at all and there’s no Federal Inspections, no State Inspections. They pass it as long as the beef isn’t cancerous.

*

I live in a trustee unit and I seen them throw away a whole truckload of meat, a whole truckload of beef and fish and everything. They just took it to the dump. They dumped cases of cereal. They’ve dumped all kinds of food that they said was contaminated but I’ve seen guards go out there and pick it up and take it home. Where’s the tax money going to?

Legumes

They issue shell peanuts in a big can and you’re allowed to take a couple or whatever to your table. Now there are people that feel that they want to take these back to their units. Okay, I’ve seen an officer catch an individual with a pocket full of peanuts, take him to the captain’s office, and make him eat every one of those peanuts, right there and then. Either that or go to lockup. Naturally, the person doesn’t want to go to lockup, so he’s gonna eat the peanuts or try to throw them under the table or in the trash—whatever he can do. You know, it’s just ridiculous.

Food-strike

The quality wasn’t good before [the food strike], but there was plenty of it.

*

I wrote a letter to the warden. It was a letter explaining to him that because the food was cold and we were only given thirty minutes to eat and this was in the winter and snow came in here…I told him this ain’t demanding anything—this isn’t a threat—but we want to get this straightened out. They gave me a disciplinary report.

*

I came here in ’73 and I went into the kitchen to work and the trays were bad. I came in on early call and put them in some bleach. The guard locked me up for refusing to work because I told him I’d clean. He wanted me to clean the walls, get a rag and clean the walls. I told him that these trays are dirty. I said, “I’m cleaning them.” He said, “You’re refusing a direct order.” I said, “Look, man. Understand. They’re dirty. We eat from these. Let me clean them.” He said, “I’m going to give you a report.” I said, “I quit. Lock me up.”

*

Since the strike in 1976 the food has gotten worse. It was at least hot then. After that they just tried to feed us on paper plates. I was on death row and I noticed the change. We went on hunger strike. The Attorney General’s Office had to hear about it because we demanded our steel trays back. I mean, boxes of cereal would get stuck to the eggs.

*

During the food strike, we had some people on the streets [ACLU attorneys] trying to do something and so we were just showing them that we was behind them and we appreciate it and we’re trying to help ourselves, and so they come up there to bust a riot. They said it was a riot. Everybody’s gonna miss their parole board if they don’t go to work, etc.

*

The strike itself was a failure. It didn’t last very long.

*

Q: Was the food strike pretty well organized?

A: Not really. There was only [dormitories] B-1, B-2, E-1, and E-2 that didn’t go to eat. I think [we would have considered] some alternative when we saw what they were going to do. [If] they would have come down there with them ax handles and said, “You all going to eat or we’re going to whip your ass,” I think we would have went to eat. But there was no alternative offered. They didn’t give us no choice. That’s what they came to do and that’s what they did.

*

A: The guards that were at the door said, “All of you that don’t want in the action, get to the left.” Everybody got to the left. Everybody got to the left. “Everybody lie down with your hands straight of your head.” They could have come in and there would have been no problem, but then I heard in Spanish they were saying, ataque, and I heard boom-boom. They shot two canisters. And then boom boom boom. I stopped counting at 25. 25. I say, “son-of-a,” we thought they were gonna kill us, man. So everybody went to the windows, you know, we’re choking, trying to get air and the guards were out there with broomsticks and were hitting us in like that so we wouldn’t be able to breathe. I thought I was gonna die. Then they come in with the masks and started beating on people with sticks and when you ran out it was like you going to one of those Indian things, you know, you know like on TV—

Q: A gauntlet?

A: Yeah, you know, and they’re hitting. I’m lucky because when I ran out I stumbled and I fell and I only got hit on my back. I didn’t get hit on the head.

*

Everybody got beat up in that dorm from officers. Throwed tear gas in and everybody walking out and was just banged up. If you tried to hold your head, they’d hit you in the knees so if you bent down to hold your knees, you’d get cracked on the head.

*

They used ax handles.

*

A: They brought us out of our dormitories. They shot tear gas in on us and brought us down. They were waiting for us when we came out and they whipped us from when we came out of the door to lockup.

Q: When did they hit you with…what did they use?

A: Ax handles.

Q: Was it kind of like running a gauntlet?

A: What’s what is was exactly. They were on both sides of the hall and we were having to shed our clothes from the door of the unit until we got into the hallway and then when we got into the hallways it was just a whipping all the way down there, you know. You could dodge a few, but you couldn’t dodge them all.

*

A: It was the Administrators.

Q: Was Malley out in the hall? Did you ever see him out there, sort of witnessing all of this?

A: Yeah. He was out there.

*

There must have been about 30 or 50 of them because it was—as you came out of the unit they were there all the way down the corridor. I think I even saw the Chaplain there swinging a stick.

*

[Warden] Malley was out there and [Deputy Warden] Montoya was out there. They told them beat them out of the units. That’s what they did. They had their gas masks on and their shields and their ax handles and they beat us to [Cellblock] 4 into [Cellblock] 3.

*

It was a peaceful sit down strike. They locked everybody up. They knocked the shit out of us, they threw tear gas on us, they took us to Cellblock 3. We were in 3 for six months.

*

They didn’t give us any Jell-O . We were supposed to get Jell-O . It’s there all the time. They didn’t give us any Jell-O . So we refused to give them our trays. So they went and called the goon squad. They started opening cell by cell; they go in there, kick your ass and take the tray. Just for Jell-O . That’s all we wanted. Jell-O .

*

I was beat in lock-up and was beat from my cell to the hole. I was living in the top tier and I was beat from the top tier to the bottom floor and into the hole and beat when they got me in the hole. I was beat again in 1976. During the food strike I was beat and I was beat again in I think, it was 1975. Me and another inmate in the cell right next to me in the lock-up and they didn’t put us in the hole. They just ran a goon squad in on us and whipped us real good and split, you know. And I’ve been beat about three or four times. The first time I got beat to Cellblock 3 was because I was living in the top tier and the guy in the cell right next to me—they said they had confidential information that he had a syringe hidden in his cell and they came up and shook his cell down and they didn’t find it and they shook my cell down and they didn’t find it, but they said that they knew it was there and they was going to take us in the hole and I got real upset. I told them, “Well, if I’m going to go to the hole I’m going to be at the hole for a reason. So bring your best five and let’s do it, man. We’ll dance.”

*

Everybody in Cellblock 3 was starving to death and there were some locked in their cells, so I thought I’ll just go get them a bunch of weenies or something. So I went over and I looked around and the kitchen was all dark. So I got me a…the deal they put the hamburgers in. Like a big coffin, real big. A round deal they put the hamburgers in. So I got me a box of about four hundred weenies and I threw it in there and I thought I’ll go to the bakery and I’ll get me some bread and I’m holding that deal and then those guards come in with guns. “Drop it, boy.” And you see their fingers. There’s a fly there and it’s itching, you know.

*

A: I got put in the hole for the strike. They put me in the hole and would feed me one piece of bread or one piece of bologna at five o’clock in the morning and again at five o’clock at night. No mattress or anything. No clothes. Maybe up to six of us inside a cell. We’d have to sleep on each other. All you could use for a pillow would be a person’s leg or arm or something.

Q: How long did you stay in?

A: Ten days in the hole.

Q: How many people were inside?

A: The first three days it was two of us, and then, seven days after there were six of us.

Q: And how long did you stay there with five or six guys?

A: About seven days.

Q: Jesus.

A: Mhm.

Q: Everybody just got fed bread and bologna.

A: One piece of bread and one bologna and a cup of milk coffee.

Q: That’s a hell of a way to die.

A: I was weighing two hundred pounds, was weightlifting, eating candy and Fritos. And then when I got locked up, I left my muscles down there.

Q: What’d you weigh when you got out of the hole?

A: I was weighing about a hundred and thirty-five pounds.

Q: And you went in at two-hundred?

A: Yes, sir. In the ten days I was in the hole, I say I lost about sixty pounds or so.

Q: Jesus.

Rating Food Services

Scale: 0 – 5

I’d have to give that a Zero.

*

Zero-minus. Boy, that was terrible. Unbelievable.

*

Zero.

*

Food’s terrible. Zero.

*

Shhh. Zero, man.

*