Game Born in Mexican Prisons Brings People Together
2025-01-03
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1On a Sunday afternoon in Mexico City's Roma neighborhood, Rosa María Espinosa joins about 80 men in a park to play poleana.
2The almost 100-year-old game was created in a Mexican prison and requires luck and thinking skill.
3Poleana still carries a stigma connected to its birth as a prison game.
4However, it is growing popular as people from different backgrounds discover its appeal.
5Espinosa says she like the excitement of the game.
6"But sometimes," she adds, "the dice aren't lucky."
7Poleana is played with four people and a square wooden box with a sunken center for dice rolling.
8Each player has four pieces that they race around the box.
9They use dice combinations and math to govern how to move their pieces strategically.
10At the same time, they must also try to block moves by their competitors.
11The board represents the limits of a prison and getting out of it before others.
12Winning freedom is the game's goal.
13"People used to say, 'these folks know how to play because they've been to prison,'" said the 62-year-old Espinosa.
14"Thank God I've never been, but I like to play."
15That was the first time she had competed against anyone besides her family or friends.
16She usually plays on Tuesdays and Sundays in the small church in her apartment building.
17Alejandro Olmos studies ancient cultures at the National Anthropology and History School.
18He has studied and played poleana for years.
19He has followed the game's roots to the Indian game chaupar (or pachisi).
20He found evidence of the connection dating back 1400 years.
21After British colonization of India, the game spread to Western countries under different names, including Ludo, Aggravation and Parcheesi.
22In 1915, the American company Parker Brothers marketed a similar game.
23Parker Brothers named it "Pollyanna" after a popular 1913 children's book by Eleanor H. Porter.
24Sometime around 1940, the game spread to prisons in Mexico City, including Lecumberri.
25That prison's physical structure is very similar to the design of the game board.
26So experts say Lecumberri may have been the birthplace of modern poleana and its new set of rules.
27Olmos said that in Mexico, "the game reflects the roughness of prison life: mistakes are not pardoned."
28Six years ago, Jonathan Rulleri started a family business marketing poleana.
29His goal was to bring together people from different backgrounds.
30One of the early difficulties was establishing common rules for the game, which in Rulleri's words,
31"has been spreading from below, from prison to the street and from the street into neighborhoods."
32The 37-year-old man learned to play while serving a sentence in a prison outside Mexico City, the capital.
33After his release, he struggled to find work.
34He and his wife launched a food delivery service. However, the business proved unsuccessful.
35This led him to accept an offer to make a poleana board for a friend.
36Then came another offer.
37Soon he began to post his creations on social media.
38He said they gave up the food business and started making poleanas instead.
39The business, Poleana Cana'da Frogs, has organized 55 poleana tournaments.
40They are family-friendly, including people of all ages.
41"We want to remove the game's stigma ..." Rulleri said.
42In the 1980s, the game began to spread beyond the prisons and into Mexico City's neighborhoods.
43Tepito is one of the neighborhoods where people are almost always playing poleana.
44Fernando Rojas is 57 years-old and learned poleana when he was 18.
45But it was in prison where he really got good at the game.
46"It really helps you escape the reality of being a prisoner and that's how it started," Rojas said.
47"No one can understand what it's like to be a prisoner ... you don't see the end of your sentence. There are people who have to do drugs as their way to escape. Poleana is very important in prison."
48Now the game helps Rojas cope with life's difficulties.
49"We all have problems, in prison and in the street," he said.
50"So a lot of people come here for a distraction."
51While luck plays a part in the game, math understanding is also important.
52That is why Diego González and Dana López are very happy that their 7-year-old son Kevin is learning to play poleana. He has fun and his math skills are improving.
53González also runs a family business making poleana boards.
54He started the business after serving a three-year sentence 10 years ago.
55His boards are popular birthday and Christmas gifts.
56Some are personalized and might include images of loved ones who have died, or playful pictures for players who are children.
57Sales of the board game sharply increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
58People were stuck at home and found that the game was a good way to pass the time.
59"They realized it's not a bad game," González said, "it's a game of strategy and getting the family together."
60I'm Anna Matteo.
61And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.