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Felix Rodriguez, an official of the state's department of corrections, tried to negotiate over a walkie-talkie with a group of inmates who used names like "Chopper One," "Chicano" and "Honky." They read a list of eleven complaints, including overcrowding, bad food and harassment by guards. But prison officials quickly concluded that Chopper One and the others had little influence over most of the convicts.
By 10 p.m. the riot began to burn itself out. Throughout the night, hundreds of prisoners, weary of the insurrection and fearful of being killed, made their way to the guardhouse on the edge of the compound to surrender. By morning, the remaining inmates agreed to free some of the guards in return for access to reporters and photographers. Among the first to enter the prison grounds was TIME Photographer Steve Northup, who reported: "There was smoke everywhere. You could see people giving themselves up—ghostlike figures coming out, waving white sheets. It was a nether world."
As more reporters entered the prison, more hostages were freed. When the last two guards walked out at 1:26 p.m. on Sunday, the policemen and National Guardsmen retook the prison without firing a shot. An hour later, Governor Bruce King announced that the riot was over and bent down to kiss an elderly Hispanic woman, one of the hundreds of inmates' relatives who had stood outside the fence all night. Her face turned stony. "What happened to our men?" she demanded.
It was a question that could not be answered fully, even days later. When a prison official read the list of those known to have survived ("Anselmo Duran . . . Albert Garcia . . . Adolfo Lemos"), there were cries of joy from the crowd. But others missed relatives' names and begged him to check again. "Please, mister, can you please tell me if 23355 is O.K.?" asked Lorenzo Chavez, who was reciting the identification number of his brother Gilbert. No answer came back. At week's end anthropologists from the University of New Mexico were sifting through ashes in the burned buildings, looking for teeth, bones and anything else that remained of the missing inmates Some 350 survivors huddled under blankets in the 20° cold of the prison compound. The rest were kept temporarily in the buildings that had escaped destruction. State officials estimated that it will take seven months and $22 million to repair the damage. Meanwhile they made arrangements to transfer some inmates to federal and state prisons in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana and Oklahoma.
Why did such savagery take place? Prison experts readily cited some causes. The penitentiary was badly overcrowded; built in 1956 for 800 inmates, it routinely held up to 1,200, and the close confinement helped make fights and homosexual rape everyday occurances. In an investigation completed last month State Attorney General Jeff Bingaman also concluded that the prison was sorely understaffed. Moreover, the report found that the guards were underpaid, poorly trained and badly supervised. The situation, the report said, amounted to "playing Russian roulette with the lives of in mates, staff and the public."