Origin from 1963
Violence at a Coral Gardens gas station near Montego Bay on 11 April 1963 escalated into a state crackdown: Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante ordered police to "bring in all Rastas, dead or alive," and over the following two days at least eight Rastafari were killed and up to 150 detained, many with their dreadlocks forcibly cut and some tortured. Accounts of the precipitating violence conflict, a police version against an account locating it in a longstanding land dispute at the Rose Hall estate; Jamaica's government did not formally apologize until April 2017, more than fifty years later.
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Start YearSourced to the subject's own account End YearSourced to the subject's own accountJamaica's government did not formally apologize for the 1963 crackdown until April 2017, more than fifty years later. StatusSourced to the subject's own account Learn More
How Jamaica Suppressed Rastafari at Coral Gardens
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Violence at a gas station in Coral Gardens, near Montego Bay, on 11 April 1963 escalated within hours into a state crackdown on Rastafari across the island. Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante ordered police to "bring in all Rastas, dead or alive," turning a local incident into an order aimed at an entire religious community rather than at the individuals involved in the original violence.
Over the two days that followed, at least eight Rastafari were killed and up to 150 detained, many of them with their dreadlocks forcibly cut and some subjected to torture. What had actually set off the violence is not agreed even now: a police account blames the confrontation on the Rastafari present, while another traces the trigger to a longstanding land dispute at the nearby Rose Hall estate, a genuine disagreement between the two versions that this article states rather than resolves.
What Coral Gardens changed for Rastafari in Jamaica was the length of the reckoning that followed the crackdown itself. Jamaica's government did not formally apologise for what had happened until April 2017, more than fifty years after the events at Coral Gardens, leaving the movement to carry the memory of a state ordered roundup for two full generations before the state that had ordered it acknowledged it at all.
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