More than 900 people died in Jonestown. Guyana wants to make it a tourist attraction
GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Guyana revisits a dark history almost half a century later American Reverend Jim Jones and more than 900 of his followers died in the rural interior of the South American country.
It was the biggest suicide-murder in recent history, and a government-backed tour operator wants to open the ancient commune now surrounded by lush vegetation to visitors, a proposal that reopens old wounds, with critics saying it would disrespect the victims and would unearth a sordid past.
Jordan Vilchez, who grew up in California and was transferred to Peoples Temple Township at age 14, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the United States that she had feelings mixed feelings about this tour.
She was in Guyana’s capital the day Jones ordered hundreds of his supporters to drink a poisoned, grape-flavored drink that was given first to children. His two sisters and two nephews were among the victims.
“I almost died one day,” she remembers.
Vilchez, 67, said Guyana has every right to profit from any Jonestown-related project.
“On the other hand, I feel like any situation where people have been manipulated to death should be treated with respect,” she said.
Vilchez added that she hopes the tour operator will provide context and explain why so many people have gone to Guyana in hopes of finding a better life.
The tour would transport visitors to the remote village of Port Kaituma, nestled in the lush jungle of northern Guyana. This is a trip available only by boat, helicopter or plane; rivers instead of roads connect the interior of Guyana. Once there, it’s another six miles via a rough, overgrown dirt trail to the abandoned commune and former farming village.
Neville Bissember, a law professor at the University of Guyana, questioned the proposed tour, calling it a “macabre and bizarre” idea in a recently published letter.
“What part of Guyana’s nature and culture is represented in a place where mass suicides and other atrocities and human rights violations have been perpetrated against a subjugated group of American citizens, who do not have nothing to do with Guyana or with the Guyanese? he wrote.
Despite the constant criticism, the tour enjoys strong support from the Government Tourism Authority and the Guyana Tourism and Hospitality Association.
Tourism Minister Oneidge Walrond told the AP that the government supported the efforts in Jonestown but was aware of “a certain level of resistance” from some sectors of society.
She said the government had already helped clear the area “to ensure a better product could be brought to market”, adding the tour may require Cabinet approval.
“It certainly has my support,” she said. “It’s possible. After all, we saw what Rwanda did with this horrible tragedy as an example.
Rose Sewcharran, director of Wonderlust Adventures, the private tour operator that plans to take visitors to Jonestown, said she was buoyed by the support.
“We think it’s time,” she said. “It happens all over the world. We have many examples of dark and morbid tourism around the world, including Auschwitz and the Holocaust Museum.
The mass murder-suicide of November 1978 was synonymous with Guyana for decades until huge quantities of oil and gas were discovered off the country’s coast almost a decade ago, causing do one of the world’s largest offshore oil producers.
New roads, schools and hotels are being built in the capital, Georgetown and beyond, and a country that rarely welcomed tourists now hopes to attract more.
An obvious attraction is Jonestown, argued Astill Paul, the co-pilot of a twin-engine plane that carried U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan of California and an American news crew to a village near the township a day before hundreds of no one dies on November 1st. January 18, 1978. He saw armed men fatally shooting Ryan and four others as they attempted to board the plane on November 18 and return to the capital.
Paul told the AP he believed the former commune should be developed as a heritage site.
“I sat on the tourism board years ago and suggested we do this, but the minister at the time rejected the idea because the government wanted nothing to do with morbid tourism “, he remembers.
Until recently, successive governments shunned Jonestown, arguing that the country’s image had been badly damaged by mass murder-suicides, even though only a handful of Aboriginal people had died. The overwhelming majority of victims were Americans like Vilchez who flew to Guyana to follow Jones. Many endured beatings, forced labor, imprisonment, and repeats of mass suicide.
Supporters of a tour include Gerry Gouveia, a pilot who also flew when Jonestown was active.
“The area should be reconstructed just so that tourists can have a first-hand understanding of its layout and what happened,” he said. “We should rebuild Jim Jones’ house, the main lodge and the other buildings that were there.”
Today, all that remains is pieces of a cassava mill, pieces of the main lodge and a rusty tractor that once carried a flatbed trailer to take temple members to the Port Kaituma airfield.
Until now, most visitors to Jonestown have been journalists and family members of the deceased.
Organizing an expedition alone is intimidating: the area is far from the capital and difficult to access, and some consider the nearest village dangerous.
“It’s still a very, very, very difficult area,” said Fielding McGehee, co-director of The Jonestown Institutea non-profit group. “I don’t see how this project could be economically feasible due to the huge amounts of money it would take to make it a viable place to visit.”
McGehee cautioned against relying on supposed witnesses who will be part of the tour. He said memories and stories that have been passed down through generations might not be accurate.
“It’s almost like a game of telephone,” he says. “It doesn’t help anyone understand what happened in Jonestown.”
He recalled that a survivor proposed a personal project to develop the abandoned site, but members of the temple community asked him: “Why do you want to do this?”
McGehee noted that dark tourism is popular and that going to Jonestown means tourists could say they visited a place where more than 900 people died on the same day.
“It’s the prurient interest in tragedy,” he said.
If the circuit eventually begins operating, not everything will be visible to tourists.
When Vilchez returned to Guyana in 2018 for the first time since the mass murder-suicide, she made an offering to the land upon her arrival in Jonestown.
Among the items she buried in the abandoned commune where her sisters and nephews died were pieces of hair from her mother and father, who did not make it to Jonestown.
“It just felt like a gesture that honored the people who had passed away,” she said.
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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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