Dear Editor,
Since Wanderlust Adventures GY, in the person of Ms. Roselyn Sewcharran, disclosed their intention of mounting a Jonestown Tour as a tourist attraction, supported by the Guyana Tourism Authority, they describe it as a “Jonestown Memorial Tour”, I wrote at some length (published on 7th December in all the newspapers, except the Guyana Chronicle) expressing my concern about this idea, as did Mr. Neville J. Bissember.
Ms. Sewcharran subsequently responded to these letters, though not mentioning them specifically. She described them as “misconceptions”, and undertook to explain “the purpose and approach of this experience”. Perhaps she is well intentioned. She says, “our work has involved extensive research, fact checking, interviews and community engagement”, and claims “our guides are thoroughly trained and knowledgeable”.
Perhaps, but yet she has not bothered to consult with the only two Guyanese still alive who were intimately involved at the highest level of government in this event, and I question where and by whom her guides were “thoroughly trained”.
Not surprisingly, the announcement of this private operator to exploit Jonestown as a tourism attraction with the blessings of Guyana’s Tourism Authority, and indeed the Minister of Tourism, Industry & Commerce, has invited the attention of the international media, including even CNN, all of it generally negative for Guyana.
Other letters on the subject have since appeared in our media. Two are of particular note. One from Donald Sinclair and the other from Ruel Johnson. Both Sinclair and Johnson have referred directly to Bissember’s letter, but not mine. Sewcharran and both Sinclair and Johnson have sought to justify “Jonestown as a tourism attraction” by drawing parallels of other tragic events, such as Auschwitz in Germany, Ground Zero in New York, Rwanda Genocide, and others of similar horror. I strongly disagree. There is no justifiable comparison with Ms. Sewcharran’s approach to presenting Jonestown as a tourist attraction.
In Germany, for example, the Auschwitz Memorial was in fact commissioned over a number of years, first by a group of former prisoners establishing a Museum and a Protection Board to protect the site in 1946, followed the next year by the Polish Parliament creating the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum, and in the 1960s, the Council for Protection of Monuments to Struggle and Martyrdom constructed a monument on the site with the approval of the International Auschwitz Committee and the Minister of Culture and Art.
In the case of Rwanda, the Kigali Genocide Memorial was started when the Kigali City Council and the Rwanda and National Commission for the fight against Genocide commissioned a UK-based Genocide Prevention Organization, Aegis Trust, to establish the Memorial.
It is also interesting that Fielding McGehee, Co-Director of the Jonestown Institute, a Resource Center on Jonestown at San Diego State University (which I have visited), on hearing about the Wanderlust Adventures’ proposal, recalled that one of the Jonestown survivors had proposed a memorial-type project, which was abandoned after opposition by other members of the Peoples Temple community, and warned against relying “on supposed witnesses who will be part of the tour”, and that “the memories and stories that have trickled down through generations might not be accurate”. He said “it does not help anyone understand what happened in Jonestown”.
Ruel Johnson’s letter, as distinct from Sinclair’s, has sought to unnecessarily draw political conclusions, wrongly holding the Burnham government equally responsible for a massacre which would have occurred no matter where the Peoples Temple was located, and Jim Jones concluded that they were externally threatened. Hence, the hitherto secret frequent suicide death rehearsals which took place at Jonestown in anticipation of a perceived external threat long before the Ryan visit turned rehearsal into reality.
I have significant respect for both of these gentlemen, as indeed I have for Minister Oneidge Walrond and the Guyana Tourism Authority. There is, however, a huge difference between a private tourism company promoting a tour and profiting from the memories of Jonestown as a tourist attraction, and calling it the “Jonestown Memorial Tour” and how the Auschwitz Memorial in Germany and the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda were commissioned.
Sunday Stabroek News (15th December), in an excellent Editorial on the Wanderlust Tours announcement, asks the question, “Is it an act of respect to take tourists around the site of mass murder? This is not Auschwitz, which is a memorial and a museum. There is no memorial at Jonestown, no mark of respect for those who were killed”.
The Stabroek news Editorial goes on, quite correctly, to point out that “the factors which led to Jonestown are part of US history, particularly that of California, and are best told in that setting. How the settlement functioned here is part of Guyanese history. That is a topic for research, not a tour”.
So, let me repeat what I wrote in my letter of 6th December, 2024: “Jonestown and all that occurred there was an ugly, horrible stain on the history of our country. The memory of it, in my view, and the result of my unique involvement in explaining it to the world at the time, most certainly convinces me that this is not, and should not be, promoted and profited from as a tourist attraction, which has suddenly been advanced by a private tourism company, and surprisingly supported by the Guyana Tourism Authority.”
Should our Government seriously consider the need for establishing a fully researched and financed Jonestown Memorial and Museum on the now abandoned site where the Peoples Temple community lived, farmed, and died, and then invite tourists to visit? In my view, absolutely yes.
Should our Government be supporting a private tour operator taking tourists to a place in the jungle where Jonestown once existed and innocent people were murdered by a crazy cult leader as a tourist attraction to our country, however well intended? Absolutely no.
Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
