Entrepreneurs move to turn scene of jungle massacre into tourism site in Guyana

CARLTON Daniels was sweating as he sliced through the jungle with his cutlass. He pointed at some bushes and said a chimpanzee named Mr Muggs had once lived there in a cage. Then he emerged in a clearing, proclaiming: "Welcome to the People's Temple Agricultural Project."

Better known as Jonestown, where more than 900 Americans committed suicide or were murdered in one night in 1978 at the behest of cult leader Jim Jones, the site yields few signs of remembrance. Rains, termites and scavengers have laid waste to its buildings. Vines camouflage its rusting vehicles.

But while nature seems intent on erasing the utopian experiment that went tragically awry here, some enterprising souls in Guyana, South America's only English-speaking nation, have another idea. They want Jonestown reborn as a tourist destination and are even getting some tepid help from the government, which spent more than 30 years largely trying to live it down.

Indranauth Haralsingh, director of the Guyana Tourism Authority, came here late last year to put up a plaque saying: "In memory of the victims of the Jonestown tragedy, November 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana".

Some who live on Jonestown's edge, in the squalid mining town of Port Kaituma, could not be happier. "Something more ambitious, a full-blown memorial of sorts, should have been founded years ago," said Daniels, 64, a wiry shopkeeper who ranks among Port Kaituma's top authorities on Jonestown, having met Jones on different occasions as a postal agent here in the 1970s.

"Imagine," Daniels said while relating how Jones's pet chimpanzee Mr Muggs was used to terrorise disobedient followers, "Jonestown could become a world-renowned centre for the study of cults and what makes them tick."

Poverty offers another motivation for those trying to bring tourism to Jonestown. Despite recent economic growth, the country, whose official name remains the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is still recovering from the doctrinaire isolationism that made it the ideal place for Jones to establish his remote utopian enclave.

"Jonestown was actually a wonderful place," said Gerald Gouveia, 54, who as an army pilot would fly senior Jonestown members to Port Kaituma. "They were hard-working idealists who wanted a community free from nuclear destruction, but their dream got twisted when they placed their leader in such reverence that it got to his brain."

Gouveia wants to take visitors to Jonestown on his small airline. He flies his own planes, and on a trip to Port Kaituma he pointed out the spot on the airstrip where Leo J Ryan, a congressman from California who came to investigate abuse claims in Jonestown, was shot dead by cult gunmen. Three journalists and a defector were also killed in the encounter. Those killings put into motion the exhortation by Jones that culminated in his night of mass suicide and murder.

"I myself placed the American congressman's corpse in the body bag," Gouveia said. "We can't just erase from our consciousness the events that transpired here, as that would be an insult to all the victims who perished in this place."

Talk first surfaced a few years ago about promoting Jonestown, a strategy that people here call "dark tourism". One New York investor even drew up an investment plan with a Jonestown survivor to create a ten-acre project including a museum, cafe, shop and living quarters for employees.

The project has not materialised. Some Guyanese ascribe this to Jonestown's remoteness. Officials are also reluctant to draw attention to Jonestown, trying instead to retool Guyana's image as a responsible environmental steward, most recently through a deal in which Norway pays Guyana to preserve forests.

Asked about plans for tourism at Jonestown, Samuel Hinds, Guyana's prime minister, said: "It's something I could live with. I know there are people talking about restoration, but it would probably have to be a total recreation from pictures."

Some scholars who are trying to explain Jonestown to new generations say commercial tourism at the site would constitute disrespect for its victims. "Jim Jones was a master manipulator who created a siege mentality," said Julia Scheeres, a California author who is writing a history of Jonestown. "Let the place be a peaceful field covered with flowers."

"We'd like some diversification, and that's where tourism would fit in," said Dane Peters, 46, owner of Port Kaituma's Beacon's Hotel. He said he built the plaque at Jonestown last year to attract visitors.

Yet while Port Kaituma's merchants dream of riches, the task of memorialising Jonestown falls largely on Daniels, the former postal agent. He arrived in 1962 as a servant at the country club for British engineers who once mined manganese in the area. The British, along with their grounds for playing badminton and lawn tennis, are long gone.

"The bush swallows everything," he said, swinging his cutlass at a barbed plant.

At one spot, Daniels stopped and seemed to have a chill run down his spine, despite the blistering heat. He said that this was where a sign once hung, above Jones's throne, in Jonestown's pavilion. It read: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."