More than 40 years after Jonestown was the site of the most infamous mass murder and suicide in contemporary history, a South American tour group is transforming the area into a vacation attraction.
According to the tour operator, the first group of tourists is already planned to visit the site, which is situated in Guyana’s rural interior, in January. They will undergo an overnight experience designed to give them a better understanding of the tragedy for $650.
Wanderlust Adventures’ creator and owner, Roselyn Sewcharran, stated, “The thing is, Jonestown remains a tragic part of Guyana’s history, but it is also an event of global significance.” “It offers critical lessons about cult psychology, manipulation and abuse of power.”
Sewcharran will lead small tour groups to the site of Jonestown, a community established by American Reverend Jim Jones and hundreds of his followers, with the help of the Guyanese government. It was the scene of the Jonestown Massacre in 1978, where hundreds of children were among the more than 900 individuals who perished after Jones gave them cyanide laced with a fruit-flavored drink.
The guided tour will also take visitors from Georgetown to the Port Kaituma airport, where U.S. Representative Leo Ryan and two members of the NBC News crew—reporter Don Harris and cameraman Bob Brown—were shot and killed as they tried to board their flight home on the day of the massacre.
Jackie Speier, a worker at the time and a former lawmaker, survived the assault.
“I was lying on the airstrip with my head down pretending I was dead, and I just kept hearing shots ring out,” she stated to TODAY in 2018.
Some people in Guyana are dubious about the tour that would take them to such a dismal site, even if dark tourism—a word used to describe tourists visiting places connected to death and tragedy—is becoming more and more popular.
Neville Bissember, a senior lecturer at the University of Guyana, stated, “It was evident that there was a lot of illicit activity going on there, human rights violations, food and sleep deprivation, forced imprisonment, and the images were pretty gory, reprehensible.” “People would prefer not to remember.”
Sewcherran, however, doesn’t agree. After all, visitors from all over the world pay to visit places like the former Nazi concentration camps in Poland, Ground Zero in New York City, and Chernobyl in Ukraine.
“These sites attract visitors, not to dwell on tragedy, but to understand the events … honor those affected and ensure that such histories are neither repeated nor forgotten,” she stated.
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