Guyana is revisiting a dark history nearly half a century after the Rev Jim Jones and more than 900 of his followers died in the rural interior of the South American country.
It was the largest suicide-murder in recent history, and a government-backed tour operator wants to open the former commune now shrouded by lush vegetation to visitors – a proposal that is reopening old wounds, with critics saying it would disrespect victims and dig up a sordid past.
Jordan Vilchez, who grew up in California and was moved into the Peoples Temple commune at age 14, said in a phone interview from the US that she had mixed feelings about the tour.
She was in Guyana’s capital the day Jones ordered hundreds of his followers to drink a poisoned grape-flavored drink that was given to children first. Her two sisters and two nephews were among the victims.
“I just missed dying by one day,” she recalled.
Vilchez, 67, said Guyana had every right to profit from any plans related to Jonestown.
“Then on the other hand, I just feel like any situation where people were manipulated into their deaths should be treated with respect,” she said.
Vilchez added that she hoped the tour operator would provide context and explain why so many people went to Guyana trusting they would find a better life.
The tour would ferry visitors to the far-flung village of Port Kaituma nestled in the lush jungles of northern Guyana. It’s a trip available only by boat, helicopter or plane; rivers instead of roads connect Guyana’s interior. Once there, it’s another 6 miles (9.7km) via a rough and overgrown dirt trail to the abandoned commune and former agricultural settlement.
Neville Bissember, a law professor at the University of Guyana, questioned the proposed tour, calling it a “ghoulish and bizarre” idea in a recently published letter.
“What part of Guyana’s nature and culture is represented in a place where death by mass suicide and other atrocities and human rights violations were perpetuated [sic] against a submissive group of American citizens, which had nothing to do with Guyana nor Guyanese?” he wrote.
Despite ongoing criticism, the tour has strong support from Guyana’s Tourism Authority, as well as its Tourism and Hospitality Association.
Oneidge Walrond, Guayana’s tourism minister, said that the government was backing the effort at Jonestown but was aware “of some level of push back” from certain sectors of society.
She said the government already had helped clear the area “to ensure a better product can be marketed”, adding that the tour might need cabinet approval.
“It certainly has my support,” she said. “It is possible. After all, we have seen what Rwanda has done with that awful tragedy as an example.”
Rose Sewcharran, director of Wonderlust Adventures, the private tour operator who plans to take visitors to Jonestown, said she was buoyed by the support.
“We think it is about time,” she said. “This happens all over the world. We have multiple examples of dark, morbid tourism around the world, including Auschwitz and the Holocaust museum.”
The November 1978 mass suicide-murder was synonymous with Guyana for decades until huge amounts of oil and gas were discovered off the country’s coast nearly a decade ago, making it one of the world’s largest offshore oil producers.
New roads, schools and hotels are being built across the capital, Georgetown, and beyond, and a country that rarely saw tourists is now hoping to attract more of them.
Until recently, successive governments shunned Jonestown, arguing that the country’s image was badly damaged by the mass murder-suicide, even though only a handful of local people died. The overwhelming majority of victims were Americans like Vilchez who flew to Guyana to follow Jones. Many endured beatings, forced labor, imprisonment and rehearsals for a mass suicide.
Those in favor of a tour include Gerry Gouveia, a pilot who also flew when Jonestown was active.
“The area should be reconstructed purely for tourists to get a first-hand understanding of its layout and what had happened,” he said. “We should reconstruct the home of Jim Jones, the main pavilion and other buildings that were there.”
Today, all that is left is bits of a cassava mill, pieces of the main pavilion and a rusted tractor that once hauled a flatbed trailer to take temple members to the Port Kaituma airfield.
Until now, most visitors to Jonestown have been reporters and family members of those who died.
Organizing an expedition on one’s own is daunting; the area is far from the capital and hard to access, and some consider the closest populated settlement dangerous.
“It’s still a very, very, very rough area,” said Fielding McGehee, co-director of The Jonestown Institute, a non-profit group. “I don’t see how this is going to be an economically feasible kind of project because of the vast amounts of money it would take to turn it into a viable place to visit.”
McGehee warned about relying on supposed witnesses who will be part of the tour. He said the memories and stories that have trickled down through generations might not be accurate.
“It’s almost like a game of telephone,” he said. “It does not help anyone understand what happened in Jonestown.”
Source: theguardian.com
