A board game born in Mexican prisons is bringing together people from all walks of life

MEXICO CITY — On a Sunday afternoon in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, Rosa María Espinosa joins nearly 80 men under a park pavilion to play poleana, a board game requiring mental dexterity that was born in the city’s prisons nearly a century ago. “But sometimes the dice aren’t lucky.” Playing for freedom Poleana is played on a square wooden box with a sunken center for dice rolling. In the United States, game maker Parker Brothers marketed a similar game, which was based on the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter “Pollyanna.” Sometime around 1940, the game spread in the lockups of Mexico City, with Lecumberri—a prison whose very architecture echoed the geometry of the poleana board — likely serving as its initial breeding ground. In Mexico, “the game reflects the roughness of prison life: mistakes are not pardoned.” Poleana breaks out Six years ago, Jonathan Rulleri started a family business promoting poleana with the goal of bringing together people from different walks of life.