What Babylon Meant in Jamaica in April 1963

The clearest instance of Babylon acting on Rastafari in the movement's own history took place at Coral Gardens near Montego Bay in April 1963. A land dispute at a gas station escalated into violence between a small group of Rastafari and police, several people on both sides were killed, and the Jamaican government responded with a mass roundup that swept up Rastafari across the parish regardless of any connection to the incident, cutting the dreadlocks of men taken into custody and holding many without clear charge. Rastafari in Jamaica still refer to the events as Bad Friday, and the episode is remembered inside the movement as confirmation rather than surprise, an instance in which the state, the police and the courts behaved exactly as the doctrine had already named them as behaving, so that Coral Gardens functions less as evidence introduced from outside the belief than as a case the belief had already made room for. The scale of the response, cutting hair understood as a Nazirite vow and detaining people whose only connection to the violence was wearing locks or living nearby, is what gave the term Babylon its concrete, remembered referent inside Jamaica specifically, distinct from the broader use of the same word for the whole history of slavery and colonial rule the movement also draws on.