Jim Jones led 900 followers to their deaths. A new tour revisits the history

Dead bodies lie around the compound of the People's Temple cult November 18, 1978 after the over 900 members of the cult, led by Reverend Jim Jones, died from drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Photo / Getty Images

A new overnight tour in South America pitches “a journey through history” that will offer a chance to reflect and discover local culture.

But the history in question is macabre: the mass death of more than 900 people at the remote Jonestown settlement in Guyana nearly 50 years ago. And plans to bring tourists to the former cultist site is rankling the country and the global community affected by the tragedy.

“First thing I thought of was: ‘Sooner or later, people were going to try to monetise that,’” said John Cobb, a former resident of the compound who said he lost 11 members of his family at Jonestown. “It’s inevitable.”

Wanderlust Adventures GY launched the US$650-per-person ($1155) Jonestown Memorial Tour late last month with help from the Guyana Tourism Authority, an offshoot of the Government. The country’s tourism minister, Oneidge Walrond, told the Associated Press that she supported the effort at Jonestown. A flurry of letters to the editor in local media reveal some support but also deep opposition from critics, who call the idea “ghoulish and bizarre”.

Guyana, a newly oil-rich country that promotes its wildlife, forests and waterfalls, expects 350,000 visitors this year. According to tourism data, 45% of the nearly 320,000 people who visited last year were members of the diaspora.

913 people drank cyanide-laced grape juice at Reverend Jim Jones' order in Guyana. Photo / Getty Images

Roselyn Sewcharran, Wanderlust’s owner, said the idea for the Jonestown tour came out of questions that clients often asked about the site, where American cult leader Jim Jones forced his followers and their children to drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.

“Jonestown remains a tragic part of Guyana’s history, but it is also an event of global significance,” Sewcharran wrote in an email. “It offers critical lessons about cult psychology, manipulation and the abuse of power.”

She said she doesn’t think the country should shy away from the difficult history.

“Jonestown is a stain on Guyana,” she said. “We see it as an opportunity to reclaim that narrative.”

Teaching Jonestown’s grisly history

Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple, leased land from Guyana’s government in 1974 and eventually moved nearly 1000 followers and children from California to an agricultural commune that members established. US Representative Leo Ryan of California, who had visited to investigate concerns from family members, was shot along with staffers, journalists and defectors at an airstrip as they tried to leave; five people, including Ryan, died there, and others were injured before the mass murder-suicide at the compound.

Jim Jones. Photo / Supplied

“We began asking guests about interest in the area,” said Sewcharran, who was born and raised in Guyana and earned a degree in sociology. “People expressed a genuine desire to learn more about that significant chapter of our past.”

After more than two years of research and planning, Sewcharran said she expects the first paid tour group made up of journalists to visit the site next month. She said guests from as far as Norway and the Netherlands have signed up for next year.

Organisers, she said, intend for the tour to perform a role similar to that of memorials and museums at the sites of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, the Hiroshima bombing in Japan and the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City. Such “dark tourism” sites attract visitors around the world out of morbid fascination, curiosity about history or a sense of duty.

“Our intention is to do this with the utmost respect,” Sewcharran said. “Not to sensationalise or profit but to serve as a platform for education, understanding and reflection.”

The tour will include a flight from the capital city of Georgetown to the airstrip in Port Kaituma, where Ryan’s group was attacked, and an air-conditioned drive to the remote Jonestown site. Little remains there from the community that existed nearly five decades ago.

An overhead sign says, “Welcome to the People’s Temple Jonestown,” though experts who study the group’s history say it is not the same sign that was in place at the time of the killings. A memorial that resembles a large upright headstone has been placed “in memory of the victims of the Jonestown tragedy”. A survivor who visited several years ago described the site as an “unrecognisable and overgrown” jungle on the website of the Jonestown Institute, a digital archive project under the San Diego State University library.

The bodies of followers that drank the cyanide-laced drink are strewn around the commune. Photo / Getty Images

But Sewcharran hopes that eventually there will be a larger memorial with the names of those who died, as well as perhaps a museum - which she acknowledges would require government investment. She said she wants to explore the area further to find relics and clear more of the vegetation.

The Guyana Tourism Authority did not respond to questions about the tour or future development, but it posted about the excursion on its Facebook page this month, under the heading “New Tour Alert!”

“The Jonestown Memorial Tour is not just about recounting historical events - it is about understanding the human stories behind them,” the description says. “It’s a journey that invites reflection on the choices and circumstances that led to such a tragic moment, while also honoring the lives of those who were lost.”

Massacre survivors speak out

In an editorial this week, the daily newspaper Stabroek News wrote that memorials at the site and airstrip would be signs of respect, “which a grand tour would not be.”

Editor in chief Anand Persaud said in an interview that the country shouldn’t ignore its history. But he argued that a deeper investigation of Guyana’s role in the ordeal was still needed.

“It’s really a case of how it is you go about doing this in a way that is respectful, decorous and also reflects on the fact that the history of this entire period needs to be fully investigated and learned,” Persaud said.

Dead bodies lie around the compound of the People's Temple cult. Photo / Getty Images

For some survivors, the idea of the tour is appalling.

“I was horrified, because it doesn’t deserve to be a tourist attraction,” Jackie Speier, an aide to Ryan who was shot on the airstrip and later served as a US representative, told KTVU Fox 2 in California. She said a memorial would be more appropriate in Guyana’s capital.

“I would hope that the US government would send ... a strongly worded letter to the prime minister of Guyana saying this is not a great idea, we encourage you not to do it,” Speier said.

Fielding M McGehee III, editor and research director of the Jonestown Institute, said this isn’t the first time someone has tried to turn the site into a draw for visitors.

“I’ve sort of slipped from being incredulous to cynical,” he said. “It’s just like, ‘Here we go again’.”

His wife, Rebecca Moore, the institute’s co-founder, lost her two sisters and young nephew, fathered by Jones, at Jonestown. McGehee questioned what visitors would learn, even hearing “firsthand from someone who lived in the area during Jonestown’s existence”, as the tour overview promises.

“Forty-five-year-old memories, ghosts, myths, folktales,” he said. “If you’re looking for what happened in Jonestown, you’re not going to get it.”

He said he viewed the tour as “alienating, especially for the people who were in the Temple”.

Sewcharran said her team spent hours watching interviews, news reports and documentaries, and read statements and personal accounts as part of their research. They have also spoken to Port Kaituma residents who had interactions with Jonestown, she said.

She said they chose not to contact former Jonestown residents or survivors out of consideration for their privacy and to avoid causing any trauma.

“That said, we deeply value their perspectives and are open to connecting with those who may be willing to share their stories in the future,” Sewcharran wrote in an email. “As the tour is still fairly new and evolving, we are committed to finding ways to honour and enrich the narrative while being mindful and compassionate toward those affected by these events.”

Cobb, who was born to Peoples Temple members, said he wasn’t sure what a US$650 tour would reveal in the Jonestown site’s current state and without input from former residents. He survived the massacre because he was in Georgetown playing in a basketball tournament with fellow members on the day of the killings.

“I think people are going to be disappointed,” he said. “I feel people are monetising a really serious issue, a tragedy; people lost their lives there.”

Cobb, 64, helped raise money for an Oakland memorial to the victims and maintains its website. At the Evergreen Cemetery, he said, people can scan QR codes to see the faces of people who died and learn about their lives. He said he would welcome tours that wanted to visit that memorial - and said they would be educational because of the participation of people who were involved in the community.

“I know there’s a big interest,” he said. “It’s historically a one-of-a-kind story. I think it should be remembered and not forgotten for many reasons, so people don’t make the same mistakes. So people study and find out why those people truly went there and lost their lives and what they were doing there.”

- Washington Post