The entrance to the Jonestown commune
Guyana is considering transforming one of the darkest places in history into a tourist attraction. Is it a kind of “Auschwitz and the Holocaust museum” or a “lascivious interest in tragedy”?
It is a trip that can only be done by boat, helicopter or plane; rivers, rather than roads, connect Guyana’s interior.
Once there, it is necessary to travel a further six kilometers along an overgrown dirt track to the abandoned commune and former agricultural settlement. It is a dark and dangerous place, but it may no longer be so, according to .
“We think it’s about time,” he said, Rose Sewcharrandirector of Wonderlust Adventures, the private tour operator that plans to take visitors to Jonestown, “This happens all over the world. We have several examples of dark tourism and morbid throughout the world, including Auschwitz and the Holocaust museum.”
“You certainly have my support”, assured the Minister of Tourism, Oneidge Walrond. “It is possible”, but guarantees that there may be “some level of resistance”.
The Jonestown commune witnessed, in 1978, to one of the biggest disasters in history. 909 people died in a collective suicide ritual, where a third of the victims were children. The person responsible for inciting the deaths was the American Reverend Jim Jones.
Jordan Vilchez who grew up in California and was transferred to the Peoples Temple commune, the “official” name of Jonestown, at age 14 (she is now 67), told , in a telephone interview from the US, that she has mixed feelings about the visit .
“On the other hand, I feel that any situation where people have been manipulated into dying must be treated with respect“, on the other hand, he feels entitled to profit from local tourism.
He lost members of his family, and he said that survived the disaster for one day. He even buried in the abandoned commune, where his sisters and nephews died, pieces of his mother and father’s hair, which did not go to Jonestown, as a tribute.
The law professor Neville Bissember completely rejects the proposal. “What part of Guyanese nature and culture is represented in a place where death by mass suicide and other atrocities and human rights violations were they perpetrated against a submissive group of American citizens, who had nothing to do with Guyana or the Guyanese?”
Gerry Gouveia, pilot, defends guided tours of the site: “the area should be rebuilt just so that tourists can know first-hand its configuration and what happened”, he said. “We should rebuild the Jim Jones house, the main lodge and other buildings that were there.”
But there are other impediments, including economic ones. “It’s still a very, very, very difficult area,” he said. Fielding McGeheeco-director of , a non-profit group. “I don’t see how this will be an economically viable type of project due to the huge amounts of money that would be needed to make it a viable place to visit.”
McGehee further noted that “dark tourism” is popular, and going to Jonestown means tourists can say they visited a place where more than 900 people died on the same day. “It is the prurient interest in tragedy“, he said.
