Dear Editor,
On 18th November, 1978, I was sitting in Guyana’s Consulate Office in New York City as Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister when Forbes Burnham called to inform me that people had been killed in Jonestown and that he would advise me as he learnt more. A month or two before that I had informed the Prime Minister of my concerns with regard to Jonestown resulting from calls I had received from media contacts in San Francisco where the Peoples Temple was headquartered, about the idiosyncrasies of Jim Jones amongst other things, his use of illicit drugs and his financial manipulation of his followers’ assets to his own benefit.
Following my call to Burnham, the government who had, to that date, no cause for complaint about the successful agricultural community being developed in the Northwest near Port Kaituma, the government increased its official visits to Jonestown. So, incidentally, did the US Embassy. Neither found anything to be concerned about. Not long after my conversation with Burnham, before the Jonestown disaster, I received a visit from three (3), it might have been four (4), of Jim Jones’ “ladies” asking for an interview, which I granted. I sat opposite the ladies, all of them attractive, who, to my astonishment, had their legs spread wide open, deliberately exposing themselves, wearing no underclothes, in an obviously deliberate attempt at seduction.
The ladies also used the visit to present me with a file full of glowing testimonials of the Peoples Temple operations as a religious community in San Francisco, including testimonials of their good work signed by no less a person than Rosalynn Carter, wife of then US President, Jimmy Carter. Of course, I reported the visit to Burnham. I was to learn much later that our then Ambassador to Washington, USA, Bunny Mann, had been having an affair with one of the Jones’ women who was the source of the information that I had conveyed to Burnham, hence the visit to me. In fact, the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, had come to Guyana with excellent credentials from prominent Democratic politicians like Governor Jerry Brown, California State Senate President George Moscone, Congressman Mervyn Dymally and others of that ilk and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
When Burnham became fully aware of the horrific events of the Jonestown murders from cyanide poisoning, he called to instruct me to be Guyana’s spokesperson with the US media, informing me that he had directed our Ambassador in the US and all other Government of Guyana officials to refer all requests for media interviews to me. In the meantime, the hoard of American journalists who had descended on Georgetown were denied access to official comment from the government. I recall holding just under 30 odd interviews within a week with the US media, including Tom Brokaw, at the time host of the NBC’s Today Show, and Walter Cronkite, host of CBS News. Without going into detail, more of which I will reveal in my Memoirs, I took a simple position with all of the media: “both the murderers and the victims, with a few exceptions, were all Americans”.
At the time, there was no television, cell phones or internet in Guyana and the print and radio media were controlled by the government. The majority of the Guyanese public were kept in the dark or relied on rumor for information. Few, if any, were aware of my efforts on behalf of the country to defend Guyana’s reputation against an onslaught of American media determination to blame the Guyana Government for the murders of US Congressman Leo Ryan and a number of American journalists who had accompanied him to a visit to Jonestown which triggered the events which followed. Regardless of my efforts, the horror of Jonestown and the fact that it was, as Wikipedia reports it, “the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act prior to the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001”, remained the image of our country for many many years.
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, 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. I was pleased to see that Neville J. Bissember has publicly condemned this idea. Neville, quite rightly asks, “What part of Guyana’s nature and culture is represented in a place where death by mass suicide and other atrocities and human right violations were perpetuated against a submissive group of American citizens, which had nothing to do with Guyana nor Guyanese?” Neville goes on to point out that “the only history that Jonestown represents is that which we should want to undo, rather than promote it for profit and willingly put it on display for our tourists”.
Why, indeed, I ask, do we want to invite and encourage, of all people, American tourists, any tourist for that matter, to show off a place in our country as an attraction to be proud of where 914 people, including 276 children, were murdered, forced by Jim Jones to commit suicide by consuming a cyanide Kool-Aid cocktail (4 others committed suicide at the Peoples Temple Headquarters in Georgetown)? For years after Jonestown occurred whenever I was abroad and told people that I came from Guyana, frequently they would say to me, “isn’t that the country in South America where all those people committed suicide” and some would add, “as a Guyanese you must be ashamed of what happened there”?
I know that there are some well-respected people and, indeed, friends of mine, who hold a different view and argue the case for Jonestown to be made a tourist attraction, however ghoulish or macabre this may seem, pleading that history, however unpleasant it may be, should not be buried. True, but do we have to promote, advertise and sell it when we have so much more beauty and attraction to be proud of? If this foolishness is to be pursued, I conclude by asking what a colleague of mine asked, what is the narrative to be told, and, if so, will it be by some untutored and untrained tour guide with minimal knowledge of what and why it occurred?
Sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
