In violent retribution, Alexander Bustamante, the white prime minister at the time, targeted Rastafari island-wide, ordering the military to “Bring in all Rastas, dead or alive.” Years later, I would learn the rest of this brutal history on my own, horrified as the details unfurled before me. For one long weekend in April 1963, beginning on the day that Rastas call “Bad Friday,” the Jamaican army went on a rampage, raiding and destroying several Rasta encampments all over western Jamaica.
