The day they tried to kill Bob Marley with a shot in the heart

On the night of December 3, 1976, seven gunmen entered the house of the world’s most famous reggae: Bob Marley, who would turn 80 in 2025.

In the courtyard of the house, they found the wife of the singer and songwriter, Rita Marley, and, without a word, shot her head.

Three of them surrounded the house and the others entered the kitchen where Marley talked to the members of his band, The Wailers, while preparing a fruit salad.

According to British journalist Vivien Goldman, who was in Jamaica at the time, what happened was a slow camera shooting scene.

The men fired at the musicians. The blood boiled on the walls and formed puddles on the floor. Amid the screams, one of the invaders pointed against Marley’s chest and pulled the trigger.

In total they fired more than 80 shots. But in an unbelievable outcome, no one died that night -still the tensions have recruited in the country.

JAMAICA, 1976

Even 40 years later, the episode is still considered obscure and wrapped in mystery.

At the time, Jamaica was a country opposite its current stereotype. The island was far from being a quiet Caribbean paradise.

In 1976, the boss were the traffickers and gunmen; Social tensions were on their maximum point and under the influence of the Cold War, and have fragile political structures less than two decades after its independence from the United Kingdom.

On the map, Jamaica is closer to Cuba than Cuba is close to Miami. And in the ideological cartography of the 1970s, Havana and Kingston were Neighbors of Moscow.

Prime Minister Michael Manley of the National People’s Party (PNP), socialist and close to Fidel Castro, was trying to reelection by facing Edward Seaga of the Jamaican Labor Party (JLP). Some connected Seaga to the American secret agency, Cia.

In the middle of these extremes was a worldwide reggae star who tried to maintain his neutrality, but whose music mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters.

“Politicians are the devil,” Marley said at the time, according to Mikal Gilmore, veteran journalist of Rolling Stone magazine.

The two candidates for a premier wanted Marley to campaign for them. And if he did not, it would be best to be silent.

Threat

“It was the most violent time that the country lived, and Marley was practically the only force that could unite both groups,” explained Jamaican writer Marlon James.

In 1976, world fame turned the 31 -year -old singer into an almost spiritual leader of most of the millions of island residents.

Reggae had become a popular expression of a poor country where “people were increasingly desperate and violent,” according to journalist Vivien Goldman. “The island looked full of weapons.”

Free show

The Manley government convinced Marley to offer a free show in the capital, Kingston, to calm the spirits of the population that was already tired of living in a state of emergency.

The event was scheduled for December 5 and was called Smile Jamaica (“Smile Jamaica”.

But the prime minister also made another decision that seemed only to confirm the singer’s distrust of politicians: he said the elections for December 15.

And so the association between Bob Marley and Michael Manley’s reelection campaign was inevitable.

The singer even warned that, due to this maneuver, the death threats against him increased. Even so, Marley decided to participate in the show.

Two police officers were assigned to take care of their home, which was also where The Wailers rehearsed.

But on the night of December 3, two days before Smile Jamaica, for some reason that to this day no one could explain, the seven gunmen entered Marley’s house without anyone stopping them.

The two police officers were simply not at their posts.

‘Seven murders’

In just five minutes, the men entered Marley’s house, fired at all and fled.

They were never captured and never knew who they were or where they were.

“It is a mystery like these men, who perhaps committed the most reckless and painful crime in the history of Jamaica, simply disappeared,” said writer Marlon James on the website of Editora Malpaso, who translated into the Spanish the book he wrote, ” The Brief History of Seven Killings “(” a brief story of seven murders “).

In the book, James uses as a starting point the attack on Marley to dive into the life of Kingston’s most dangerous neighborhoods, race and class conflicts, gang wars and government conspiracies.

The result is almost 700 pages where the voices of 76 characters mix. With them, Marlon James won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, perhaps the most famous literary award in the English language.

According to the American newspaper The New York Times, every explosive social plot of those years revolved around Bob Marley, who had become a saint for the oppressed, a revolutionary for conservatives and a threat to politicians.

‘Saved’ by Selassie

In addition to not knowing how the seven men managed to disappear, it is not yet known how Marley survived a shot in the chest.

The singer has always said that he was saved by the spirit of Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia killed the year before.

For Rastafáris like Marley, Selassie was the reincarnation of God. The use of “Rasta” hair and marijuana consumption is also part of this spiritual movement born in Jamaica.

“If Marley, at that moment, was inspiring instead of expiring, the bullet would have crossed her heart,” said Marlon James.

The bullet passed Marley’s chest and ended up on the left arm. There was no time for a second shot.

In the midst of the confusion, Don Taylor, the singer’s agent, threw himself upon him, taking five shots in the abdomen. But survived.

The most amazing case, however, was Rita Marley, Bob’s wife. The bullet fired at his head was stuck between his scalp and the skull without further damage.

Two days after the attack, still with dressings on his chest and arm, Marley performed for more than an hour against over 80,000 people at the Smile Jamaica concert.

Rita accompanied him, still using the hospital jersey.

‘Exodus’

A few days after the show, Marley traveled.

He went to the Bahamas, the United States and then to London. In a way, Jamaica has never been back to her home as it was before.

But murder attempt inspired what the American magazine Time considers the best music album of the 20th century, “Exodus”.

The first song, Natural Mystic, says: This may be the first trumpet, it may also be the last: many more will have to suffer. Many more will have to die.

In the last minute of a video on YouTube, dark and poorly quality images, you can see Bob Marley at the end of the Smile Jamaica presentation.

The singer delivers the microphone to a bandmate and approaches the audience. A policeman does the security.

In front of the crowd, the legend of the reggae unbuttoned the shirt slowly and shows the wound to the bullet that crossed his chest reaching to his left arm.

Marley continued with this bullet housed on the body and music until the day of his death in 1981, only 36 years old.

This report was originally published on September 6, 2016.

This text was originally published here.