Jonestown cult massacre site where 900 died eyed for tourist redevelopment
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Guyana is delving back into a bleak moment of its past, nearly half a century after cult leader Jim Jones and more than 900 of his devotees met their deaths in the dense wilderness of the lush South American country. Marking the most devastating mass suicide-murder in recent history, the government there is now contemplating whether to make the Jonestown commune—a site difficult to access and engulfed in thick greenery—open to international tourists.
Jones’ psychosis-driven violent paranoia resulted in the fatal shooting of an active US Congressman, followed by the manipulation of his cult to knowingly drink poison-laced Kool-Aid and die. The idea has reopened deeply painful chapters for many, with the notion of turning such a tragic location into a tourist spot seen as an affront by critics who feel it would denigrate the memory of those 900 who died in the isolated interior of Guyana.
Jordan Vilchez, brought into the People’s Temple community at just 14 years old, harbours conflicted emotions regarding the potential exploitation of the site where the horrors unfolded. Away in the nation’s capital when Jones commanded his followers to partake in the lethal grape drink, administered initially to children, Vilchez narrowly eluded the massacre that claimed her two sisters and two nephews.
“I just missed dying by one day,” she recalled. At 67, Vilchez acknowledges Guyana’s entitlement to benefit from any Jonestown-related ventures yet asserts, “Then on the other hand, I just feel like any situation where people were manipulated into their deaths should be treated with respect.”
Vilchez is calling on the tour operator to provide context and explain the motivations behind the scores of people who went to Guyana in search of a better life. The controversial travel offering would take intrigued tourists to Port Kaituma, an isolated village nestled deep within the lush jungles of northern Guyana, reachable only by waterways, chopper or aircraft.
Here, rivers serve as the lifelines through the wilds of the country’s interior. From this outpost, travelers could then navigate six miles down a rough, neglected track to find the haunting remains of the religious settlement and agricultural community.
The contentious excursion has sparked both interest and reproach, notably from Neville Bissember, a law lecturer at the University of Guyana, who slammed the scheme as “ghoulish and bizarre” in a critique he composed. “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 against a submissive group of American citizens, which had nothing to do with Guyana nor Guyanese? ” Bissember challenged.
Content retrieved from: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/jonestown-cult-massacre-site-900-34290236.
