This is a collection of letters to the editor published during December 2024 in the Stabroek News, Guyana’s largest newspaper, as well as the paper’s editorial of 14 December 2024, on Guyana Dark Tourism
12/03/24
Is the Jonestown Tour really necessary? – Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
I saw the recent article on the Jonestown Tour. With all of the wealth coming into the country is this really necessary. Guyana has tried for decades to distance itself from the mass suicide of Jonestown. It was always considered by locals as an American tragedy, but by the world as Guyana’s moment of fame. Is this what we really need? Do we want to announce to the world that this is what Guyana is about?
Sincerely,
Jamil Changlee
Chairman
The Cooperative Republicans of Guyana
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12/04/24
Flummoxed at the decision to make Jonestown a tourist attraction – Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
Over the decades, when Guyana was mentioned in international circles, confusion often arose in the minds of the uninformed, and our dear land of Guyana was mistaken for Ghana. Then would come the explanation that Guyana was in South America not Africa, and almost immediately thereafter, that unlike most of the latter continent, we speak English, not Spanish.
A more infamous ignominy arose after 1978 when mention of Guyana regurgitated global television images of Jonestown. The conversation would go something like this: Me: “I’m from Guyana”. Them: “Guyana…Guyana, where have I heard that country before…oh yes, Jonestown, right?”
Thankfully, we have been experiencing a reset of our image overseas, as Guyana becomes more recognized as a “small” or “tiny” (have these Western journalists fact-checked the area of England, or The Netherlands!?) oil rich developing country, or “the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere”; some even go as far as “the Dubai of the Caribbean”. In addition, Guyana’s role regionally in areas such as food security, or internationally on climate change, is making its mark.
In light of such increasing positivity, I am flummoxed as to the thought process that would have informed the decision to make Jonestown a tourist attraction: as I understand it, this is a private sector venture which has received the blessings of those in authority.
So who is the rocket scientist that came up with this incredulous business/tourism venture, the ultimate goal of which should really be to attract visitors to Guyana? I have elsewhere expressed my abhorrence over what in my humble estimation is a ghoulish and bizarre idea, but being a reasonable man, stand to be corrected, if I could be edified as regards the following: was this idea tested on a focus group, whether local or foreign; was any scientific market research done; have statistics been compiled on this matter; do persons go into a travel agency in “farrin” ecstatic about going to Guyana to visit Jonestown, as well as Kaieteur Falls? Do persons in the arrival hall at CJIA enquire about how to get to Jonestown?
Besides Americans – and perhaps Californians to be precise, from where hailed former US Congressman Leo Ryan, who was killed at Port Kaituma just hours before the Jonestown massacre – what touristic value would Jonestown hold for a visitor to Guyana from say, Japan, or Uganda, or Saint Lucia, or even Guyanese for that matter?
Make no mistake: there are various locations across the globe which have been turned into tourist attractions for historical or other reasons, their sordid past notwithstanding. From personal experience, Goree Island off the coast of Senegal is one such site; truth be told, the range of emotions with which one is overcome, while standing in those cramped, low-ceilinged, dungeon-like spaces where the slaves were assembled in the Slave House, or when staring out over the Atlantic horizon from the infamous ‘Porte de Non Retour’, are indescribable – President Bill Clinton, like countless others, is reported to have wept on his visit – that is an experience that has to be lived to be fully appreciated.
A visit to Goree Island or any of the other slave trading posts along Africa’s West Coast (Ghana, Benin) can help one to reminisce on the brutality of slavery and to attempt, however imperfectly, to relive the inhumanity, indignity and trauma of the commencement of the Middle Passage, with which our history, heritage and culture are inextricably intertwined. However I cannot in good conscience transpose the merit of a visit to Goree Island with a tour of Jonestown. What is the inherent touristic value of this venture? I can almost hear the tour guide now: “On the left is where they mixed the Koolaid that killed 900 people…and here on the right is where Jim Jones slept”,,,seriously, is this the takeaway we would want for visitors to Guyana?
According to Newsroom of 29 November, 2024, the Jonestown tour is among ‘…new adventures and tours for thrill seekers and nature lovers…designed to immerse visitors in nature, culture, and history…on unforgettable adventures across Guyana’s pristine landscapes’. What thrill is there to seek at Jonestown? What is so pristine about that killing field? What part of Guyana’s nature and culture is represented in a place where death by mass suicide and other atrocities and human rights violations were perpetuated against a submissive group of American citizens, which had nothing to do with Guyana nor Guyanese? 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.
Would it not be a better way to use Jonestown for some touristic (economic?) value if a monument or some kind of memorial was to be erected at the Port Kaituma airstrip to celebrate the lives of Congressman Ryan and the others who were shot there, as they attempted to leave and carry back the message of what they had seen and heard on their ill-fated visit to Jonestown on Saturday 18 November, 1978? In this way, all who use the airstrip at that location would get a chance to pay respects to the fallen heroes, without making the trek to visit and “tour” the creepy venue where an American cult of domination and evil had been allowed to thrive.
The alternative would be to abandon the tourism incentive and transform Jones-town into an agricultural space, although the experts would have to pronounce on the effect that hundreds of bloated and decomposing cadavers exposed to the North West heat for days would have had on the composition of the soil, and whether agriculture would still be viable, account being taken of the passage of time since 1978.
All credit should be given to our entrepreneurs and policy makers for thinking outside the box, except that in so doing we should not transition out of the box and into the rubbish bin (of history). If people want to be creative, why not, for example, promote and monetise an organized and regulated attraction of horse-drawn cart races – not a regular sight in the Caribbean – reminiscent of gladiators of ancient times charging along in fierce competition (remember how innocuously the Jamaican bob sled team got started?) As it is, the cart men already illegally commandeer some thoroughfares on a Sunday morning to pursue the local equivalent of chariot races, which is a “big money” affair. Or bird racing, for that matter, which is another big unregulated gambling event that regularly occurs both in Georgetown and elsewhere.
Or, could this decision about Jonestown as a tourist attraction go the way of the No Right Turn at Vlissengen into Lamaha decision…
Yours sincerely,
Neville J. Bissember
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12/07/24
The Jonestown project should not be promoted and profited from as a tourist attraction,
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
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12/09/24
The Jonestown Memorial Tour is not to revel in tragedy but to better understand this horrific event
Dear Editor,
This letter serves as a response to recent opposing views regarding the Jonestown Memorial Tour and its value as part of Guyana’s historical narrative. As the tour operator behind the Jonestown Memorial Tour, I wish to address some misconceptions and explain the purpose and approach of this experience.
Jonestown is undeniably a tragic part of Guyana’s history, but it is also an event of global significance, offering critical lessons about cult psychology, manipulation, and the abuse of power. Our tour does not seek to exploit or sensationalize the tragedy, it is a carefully researched and thoughtfully designed experience aimed at educating those who want to understand what happened, why it happened, and the lessons the world can draw from it. This initiative is not for everyone, nor do we present it as a typical tourist attraction. It is for those who are curious, reflective, and committed to ensuring that history does not repeat itself. Our work has involved extensive research, fact-checking, interviews, and community engagement. The people of Port Kaituma, who lived on the periphery of Jonestown, have been integral to this process and have welcomed the effort to tell the full story.
Throughout the world, there are numerous examples of tours that explore challenging histories to educate and foster awareness. For instance, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial in Poland, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan, and the 9/11 Memorial in the United States all serve as sites of reflection and education. These locations attract visitors not to revel in tragedy but to better understand the events, honour those affected, and ensure that such histories are not repeated or forgotten. The Jonestown Memorial Tour follows a similar purpose. While some view Jonestown as a stain on Guyana, we see it as an opportunity to reclaim the narrative. For too long, misconceptions have dominated public perception, painting an inaccurate image of Guyana’s role in the events. The reality is that Jonestown was primarily an American tragedy that occurred on Guyanese soil. The majority of those involved victims and perpetrators were Americans, drawn into the orbit of Jim Jones and his manipulative practices long before they arrived in our country.
As a nation, we should not shy away from history, however difficult it may be. To do so is to ignore the opportunity to educate others about the dangers of blind allegiance and unchecked power. Guyana has much to be proud of, but our history, like that of any nation, includes moments that demand reflection and understanding. It is important to clarify that our guides are thoroughly trained and knowledgeable. This is not a casual retelling of events; it is a carefully curated experience that contextualizes Jonestown within broader social, political, and psychological frameworks. We are committed to telling this story accurately and respectfully, ensuring that those who take the tour leave with a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding the tragedy.
Jonestown will always be a challenging topic, but to pretend it did not happen or to avoid addressing it is to do a disservice to history. Our aim is to ensure that those who choose to visit leave with knowledge, perspective, and a recognition of the resilience of the Guyanese people and communities like Port Kaituma, who have lived in the shadow of these events for decades.
Sincerely,
Roselyn Sewcharran
Tour Operator, Jonestown Memorial Tour
Wanderlust Adventures GY
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12/11/24
Why muddle this prevailing oil-rich developing country narrative and return to the macabre …
Dear Editor,
I write in response to the letter of 9 December 2024, which ‘serves as a response to recent opposing views regarding the Jonestown Memorial Tour …’. I take it that I am to be counted among those with an opposing viewpoint, as well as Mr. Christopher ‘Kit’ Nascimento, who quoted from my letter of 4 December in his of 7 December, 2024. The letter writer’s response sought to ‘address some misconceptions and explain the purpose and approach of this experience’.
The letter writer states that ‘Jonestown is…an event of global significance, offering critical lessons about cult psychology, manipulation and the abuse of power’. While I honestly doubt the current extent of the international reach of this horrific event, four decades after it occurred, it would seem to me to be the case that as regards the other descriptors referred to, this event would be better supported by the Ministry of Health, or the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, rather than be promoted among our tourism products.
Indeed the letter writer admits that the tour is not presented ‘as a typical tourist attraction’. Yet it was rolled out and introduced to the public among other ‘new adventures and tours for thrill seekers and nature lovers…designed to immerse visitors in nature, culture, and history…on unforgettable adventures across Guyana’s pristine landscapes’, per Newsroom of 29 November 2024.
In so far as the intention may be to hitch Guyana’s tourism wagon to the growing sector of “dark tourism”, www.dark-tourism.com, a website dedicated to that sector, has this to say: …’you can’t really call [Jonestown] dark tourism, to be frank, for as massively dark a site as it may be, it is definitely not ‘tourism’ in the usual sense of the word, but an expedition, tricky to organize, edgy and also hard work’.
Regarding the remoteness of the location, which is accessible only by boat, plane or helicopter, the website www.traveltomorrow.comsays [T]urning the site into a viable tourist destination will require significant investment which there is no guarantee of recovering’. The London Guardian of 9 December quotes Fielding McGehee, co-director of the non-profit Jonestown Institute as saying ‘I don’t see how this is going to be an economically feasible kind of project because of the vast amounts of money it would take to turn it into a viable place to visit’.
We are told that there are ‘lessons the world can draw from it’. What lessons, pray tell, could any right-thinking person draw from the sorry and bizarre spectacle of a white male American using religion as a pretext to overpower and manipulate mostly black Americans – men, women, children – to forcibly remove themselves from the US and relocate to a tropical jungle under inhuman and degrading conditions, where all manner of human rights violations were visited upon them, the ultimate of course being the deprivation of their right to life, via suicide, many forcibly? Who would want to promote this for profit, as a teachable moment, for anyone!? What lessons are there for Guyanese, who had little or nothing to do with the carryings-on in our North West interior many years ago? Which country, intent on locating its citizenry within its development strategy, would want to be distracted into mounting such an event, with all the baggage that attends it, tailormade to the idiosyncrasies of a handful of expatriates and foreigners?
Again, we are told that the idea was ‘carefully researched and thoughtfully designed’ and benefitted from ‘extensive research [and] fact-checking’. Well I believe the delusional misconception lies in the mistaken belief that, as juxtaposed by the letter writer – notwithstanding all the research, fact-checking and thoughtfulness – one could even dare to begin to put the Jonestown tour by comparison in the same category as the memorials of the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, and 9/11.
Whether it was the genocide committed against six million European Jews, the first-time use of an atomic bomb in Japan that cumulatively killed more than 100,000 persons, or the use of planes as weapons that destroyed the World Trade Center in the US and killed nearly 3000 people of several nationalities, on international television, how in the name of the Almighty does one begin to compare these three solemn, historic and tragic events with the killing of 900-plus Americans in the isolated bush of a third world country, at the behest of one paranoid man!? I believe it to be disrespectful and a travesty to put Jonestown in the same category with these three catastrophic events: contrary to what the letter writer states, I respectfully submit that the Jonestown Memorial Tour cannot ‘follow a similar purpose’.
The letter writer says she sees ‘Jonestown…as an opportunity to reclaim the narrative’. Hellooo, Newsflash: we have already done so, as Guyana is now recognized variously as an oil rich developing country, the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere, the Dubai of the Caribbean, a voice in the struggle for climate justice. Why muddle this prevailing narrative and return to the ghoulish and macabre imagery of a jungle massacre by mass suicide? The Guardian calls this ‘revisiting a dark history nearly half a century after….’ Why reopen an old wound at this critical point in our upward development trajectory?
More, the writer admits that [T]he reality is that Jonestown was primarily an American tragedy that occurred on Guyanese soil’. Yet, somewhat incongruously, it is simultaneously posited that visitors to Jonestown would form ‘a recognition of the resilience of the Guyanese people…’ If anything, Jonestown represented the frailty of the government of the day and the ease with which Jim Jones and his crew were able to manipulate key players in the administration to comply with their wishes, bend the rules and turn a blind eye to their shenanigans. Were we resilient, the People’s Temple would never have set up shop in Guyana and the Jonestown massacre would never have occurred. It is ‘an American tragedy’ and rightly should remain that.
Of the tour itself, we are told that ‘[T]his is not a casual retelling of events, it is a carefully curated experience that contextualises Jonestown within broader social, political, and psychological frameworks’. If someone could decipher for me what that gobbledygook means, I would be grateful; alternatively, in the context of full disclosure and transparency, the results of the ‘extensive research, fact-checking, interviews, and community engagement’ should be made public.
And by the way, are we to presume that the proposed tour will commence at the former Georgetown site of the People’s Temple, where some of Jones’ followers also took their lives?
Regards,
Neville Bissember
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12/12/24
The idea of a Jonestown tourism site should serve as enlightenment to the dangers of cultism,
Dear Editor,
So former US Congresswoman, Jackie Speier, who survived the 1978 Jonestown attack that killed Congressman Leo Ryan, prior to the mass cyanide suicide of over 900 Americans, disagree with the plan to turn Jonestown into a tourist attraction. In short, she has not learned her lesson the first bout. She has not learned from Jim Jones’ own favourite motto that those who don’t learn from history … (So typically demonstrated by the result of the last US elections). But she has no say in this matter. I am certain there were objections to Holocaust museums, too. I wonder if she would object to a museum depicting how the Native Americans were decimated. But, like I blogged 2 days ago, a sign should be posted at this proposed tourist site quoting Nobel Laureate George Sartanya: “Those who forget history…” the same sign Reverend Jim Jones had over his temple pulpit.
But, this idea of a Jonestown tourism site should also serve to highlight how easy it is for cults to brainwash and fool not just ordinary folks, but also brilliant leaders such as Burnham and Lionel Luckhoo, the latter who, as an outstanding defence lawyer, is the only Guyanese name to be mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was the first Guyanese Jim Jones converted following Jones’ performing a miracle healing at an “advertisement” revival meeting in Georgetown. Tourism at Jonestown should teach Guyana and the world that all doctrines, news, whether religious or scientific, should not be gullibly swallowed like cool aid laced with cyanide – which is figuratively what cultism is all about, but researched and verified. Sadly, the last election results in the US did not show this was happening.
Sincerely,
Gokarran Sukhdeo
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12/12/24
The events of Jonestown are part of Guyana’s history – Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
A few days ago, I took part in a meeting organized by Roselyn Sewcharran of Wanderlust Tours Guyana, in response to queries I made about her company’s pending Jonestown Memorial Tour initiative. My reaching out to Ms. Sewcharran was two-fold. Firstly, for several personal writing projects, I’ve spent the past eight years looking into the events of Jonestown, going so far as to visit the former sites of the Peoples’ Temple in Los Angeles and San Francisco, in the US; I have however been unable to organize a visit to the Jonestown site right here in Guyana. Secondly, as a new member of the Guyana Tourism Authority Board and in my ongoing role in crafting government heritage policy, I wanted to find out more about what I immediately thought to be a long overdue tourism-facilitated focus on a largely unexplored chapter of Guyanese history.
In that meeting, I was singularly impressed by Sewcharran’s position on why she conceived of the tour, much of it already covered in her letter of December 9, “The Jonestown Memorial Tour is not to revel in tragedy but to better understand this horrific event”. In addition to that, the designated guide for the tour, Christopher Persaud, had clearly undertaken a gargantuan amount of research on Jonestown. It is against this background that I – with no small degree of puzzlement – read the letter by Neville Bissember, Jr. “”Why muddle this prevailing oil-rich developing country narrative and return to the macabre imagery of Jonestown?” and the article “American survivor disagrees with tourist plan for Jonestown” covering objections by Jonestown survivor and former US Congresswoman Jackie Speier to the tour.
It is a curious thing to parse and argue against any organized visit to a site of human tragedy and loss, an established practice all over the world. I have been to the Anne Frank House in Netherlands, Amsterdam; the Synagogenplatz in Heidelberg, Germany; the Effigy Mounds (Iowa), the Whitney Plantation (Louisiana), and the 9/11 Memorial (New York) in the United States. All of these are sites respectfully dedicated to tragic events, and all available via tours marketed to resident and international visitors. The City of Heidelberg has the Synagogenplatz listed on its marketing page, and if you Google 9/11 Memorial, even before you get the official website of the memorial offering ticketed visits, there are a dozen sponsored links of various tour packages.
In response to Bissember’s argument that newly oil-rich Guyana should not be opening the wounds of history, all of the countries I mentioned above are multiple degrees of wealthy and powerful more than Guyana will ever be so the logic that memorial tours to sites of tragedy are somehow irreconcilable with wealth and image does not hold up at all. As for Speier, who in an ABC news piece is quoted as saying that she would be appealing to outgoing US President Joe Biden to take a stand and stop the tour, that level of delusion on the jurisdiction and right of the US to intervene in non-criminal, non-political private sector free enterprise in a sovereign state and US ally is, to borrow Bissember’s description, macabre.
That dealt with, much of the local pushback to the Jonestown Memorial Tour seems to have nothing to do with the commercial/moral dimensions to the tour but to the largely unspoken socio-political dimensions. While Wanderlust’s brochure or material does not refer to it, and while Ms. Sewcharran has been at pains to stress that there is no political aspect to her tourism product, the reality is that in the larger picture, the ‘American’ tragedy of the Jonestown massacre has deep roots in Guyana’s socio-political history, beginning smack dab in the middle of Guyana’s ill-fated first decade as a Republic.
The first settlers from Jonestown arrived in Guyana in early 1974 and very quickly, the People’s Temple sought official legal establishment in Guyana. In a letter dated the 1st of April that year, Clerk of the National Assembly wrote to partners of the law firm located at Hadfield Chambers, in response to a letter dated just three days before (March, 28), clarifying that the firm would have to identify the name of the Member of the National Assembly who would pilot the firm’s proposed bill to incorporate “the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ Church”, and informing the firm that “the Member of the National Assembly to be identified must not be a Minister nor a Parliamentary Secretary.”
By June, the private member was identified in the person of E.H.A Fowler, a PNC backbencher Parliamentarian and an initial bill drafted. Amendments would be made in December of that year and on the 9th of January, 1975, Hadfield Chambers’ partner, a Clarence A. F. Hughes would write to inform People’s Temple Representative, Mr. [Eugene] Chaikan that: “We are pleased to inform you that the amendments which you requested to the above mentioned bill have been approved by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel and the Bill has been amended accordingly. The Bill is therefore now ready for publication. Enclosed, please find our account setting out the detailed cost of publication and a statement of fees.”
In a correspondence dated 11th March of 1975, Narain would write to Hadfield Chambers, informing the firm that the bill to incorporate the Church had been passed on the 26th of February, and the Act assented to by the President (then Arthur Chung) less than two weeks later on the 7th of March, and “published in an Extraordinary Issue of the Gazette on the 10th of March, 1975.” That Act was Act No. 7 of 1975. In brief, Jonestown was formally established in Guyana in a collaboration between a PNC Member of Parliament via a private member’s bill passed in the National Assembly governed by a PNC majority, acting on behalf of Hughes, Fields and Stoby (the partners at Hadfield Chambers, a firm I believe still in existence today) as represented by partner Clarence Hughes.
What followed was what Jonestown Institute Co-Director Fielding McGeehee referred to as a symbiotic relationship between the Jim Jones and the Government of Guyana, in a 2017 lecture at the Walter Rodney Foundation in Atlanta: “Jim Jones knew who his friends were, as well as the people who opposed him. Among his friends, Jones counted Burnham himself, Deputy Premier Ptolemy Reid, Minister of Home Affairs Vibert Mingo, Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Wills, and Minister of Health and Labour Hamilton Green as his friends.”
When Jones, in 1977, felt that he had been treated badly in a business deal by local businessman, Yacoob Ally of Mazaharally Lumber, he wrote to Reid: “The transaction with Mazaharally involved some $109,000 worth of lumber. We are besieged with all sorts of pressures that we will not bother you with, but nobody should be defrauded like we have on this, and other occasions. Out of concern and love for you, we endure it, but we cannot afford this kind of thing if we are to build, develop, and produce in such a manner to make you proud of our work.”
And in August on 1978, a few months before the massacre, Jones’ chief liaison to the government of Guyana, Sharon Amos, would appeal to Burnham himself in the wake of increasing negative press in the United States: “It is obnoxious to say the least to us who are peacefully growing cassava and providing medical care of over 300 people a week, and attempting to live socialistically with full participation in the PNC and national goals, that we have to even answer, on these shores, the same lies which made life in the U.S. most destructive to the cooperative life of our members. If in some way the newspapers could be told this, we would be eternally appreciative and will be able to put our full energies into making you proud of us.”
This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg with regard to how deeply roots of Jonestown were intertwined into the sociopolitical fabric of this country, with resonances until this day. In the multiple correspondences covering several years, then Minister of Home Affairs, Claude Vibert Mingo (referenced above), was listed as the chief liaison between Jonestown and both the government of Guyana as well as the People’s National Congress.
Much of what is currently in the public domain about Jonestown is relatively new and makes for fascinating reading, particularly with regard to the people right here in Guyana who profited from the Peoples’ Temple, and who in turn provided Jim Jones a legal, social and political shield from scrutiny. In brief, I agree with Bissember that the government of the day was critical to the facilitation of the tragedy and without that facilitation the massacre would never have occurred – but that is precisely what makes it not merely an American tragedy that “should rightly remain that”, but a complex cautionary tale for Guyana, the myriad chapters and characters of which are still being revealed. I personally have, over the past several years, read through hundreds of pages of transcripts, articles, diplomatic notes and coverage – between a dedicated Jonestown website hosted by San Diego State University, newly declassified FBI files, Wikileaks releases, and contemporaneous newspaper articles – and I haven’t yet scratched the surface of the available information.
The events of Jonestown, from its establishment in 1975 via an act of Parliament to the aftermath of the tragedy including the trial of some of those involved, are as much a part of Guyanese history as, just a random example, the attempted electoral rigging of 2020, complete with familiar names and institutions. And the site itself is critical to our understanding of that history. I’d rather suspect that the spectres that Mr. Bissember – whose father, Neville Bissember, Sr. was a member of the PNC post-independence cabinet and legislature until resigning in 1970 – fears being raised are not so much in Jonestown as they are in Georgetown.
All that said, in relation to the tour itself, young Ms. Sewcharran and her equally young supporting staff have shown the courage and capacity to undertake a long overdue, and incredibly well-conceived enterprise to conduct an intelligently and sensitively curated tour to a Guyanese site of global human tragedy. In this, we have an important step in sustainably taking control of what has hitherto been a conveniently shallow and unidimensional narrative. I’ve already booked my place on the official inaugural tour.
Sincerely,
Ruel Johnson
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12/13/24
I never said that the gov’t of the day was critical to the facilitation of the Jonestown tragedy
Dear Editor,
Ruel Johnson said a lot of things in his letter of 12 December. Some I choose to ignore, some I refuse to get muddied and dirty to respond. While he proceeds on the basis of suggestion, supposition and inference, his letter stands in stark contrast to another written by my friend Donald Sinclair, a tourism professional who, albeit holding a different point of view to mine, acknowledges that the ‘sharply conflicting views [on the issue] …should not be regarded as an anomaly and the debate in the media is healthy’.
Johnson is recognised in the Guyanese society as a wordsmith and literary figure, among other things. It should therefore be easy-peasy for him to discern that in the public offerings that I have made on this topic – two letters in SN and an interview with NBC Top Story – the thrust of my submissions has been on my concern for preserving the positive international image that Guyana currently enjoys as a developing oil rich country, rather than returning to the macabre imagery of Jonestown. Nowhere have I sought – unlike him, and after considerable research I might add – to locate this issue in the domain of local politics. On this aspect, I shall say nothing other than to bring to Johnson’s attention two names – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cheddi Jagan Jr.
Given his literary credentials, I have to take strong objection to Johnson’s statement that ‘I agree with Bissember that the government of the day was critical to the facilitation of the tragedy…’. How can he agree with a position that I never stated!? What I did say, was that ‘Were we [the Guyanese people] resilient, the People’s Temple would never have set up shop in Guyana and the Jonestown massacre would never have occurred’. To take my statement and to extrapolate by hop step and jump to the position that I opined that ‘the government of the day was critical to the facilitation of the tragedy’ is a literary feat of no mean order, coming from a credentialed person such as Johnson.
Let me invite Johnson, and the Editor of the SN, who “facilitated” him, to reflect upon the defamatory implications of what was represented by Johnson, both as regards the government of the day, as well as what I said in my letter of 11 December. I turn your collective attention to the law relating to causation, and the need to establish a causal link, a chain of causation, between an action or omission on the one hand, and an outcome on the other. Also, to understand the distinction between the causa causans of an occurrence and the causa sine qua non.
Pursuing the thrust of Johnson’s extreme position, is it then the case that the pilots who flew Congressman Ryan and his team into Port Kaituma were ‘critical to the facilitation’ of their death? Did the pilots have the requisite state of mind or knowledge of the fate that was to befall them when they undertook to fly those now deceased into the interior? It is my understanding that up until the Saturday morning of the departure of Congressman Ryan and his team from Jonestown, very few people – if not Jones alone – had any prior knowledge of the massacre that would occur hours after their departure from Jonestown, or the fate that would befall the departing group at the airport. All that had happened previously were mock rehearsals, with no clear indication of when D day would be.
Ergo, could the government of the day reasonably foresee that when the People’s Temple was given permission to set up shop in Guyana three years before in1975, it was, by so doing, committing an act ‘critical to the facilitation of the tragedy’, that Johnson would want the readers to believe I represented in my letter?
I urge Johnson and the Editor of the SN to busy themselves with all convenient speed in this matter and to take the necessary corrective steps to remedy this misrepresentation and smearing of my character and withdraw the statement falsely attributed to me.
Regards,
Neville Bissember
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12/13/24
Trust, cooperation and alignment of interests, amongst others, were the translatable …
Dear Editor,
I write about two separate issues that are, however, connected by our attitudes to learning, as individuals and as a society.
1. Every year, on November 18, if I have a class (I teach at UG), I would announce to my students that it’s the anniversary of Jonestown. I’d then point out that it was very much a Guyanese tragedy in that it happened because of a failure of our local institutions, and quite probably a failure of our politics. I might also mention that Jonestown embodied both the sides of trust and cooperation. As a very successful agricultural community carved out of the jungle in Guyana, the “People’s Temple Agricultural Project” was without doubt the triumph of cooperation and leadership. Those who are offended by this description must read on.
Trust and cooperation – social capital – are known to also have the power to produce evil. We know only too well that it takes a certain honour among thieves for gangs to operate successfully. We can say the same sorts of thing about drug cartels, gold and diamond smuggling operations, and most certainly about corruption.
People began trusting Jim Jones long before People’s Temple came to Guyana. Once in Guyana, the senior members of the People’s Temple cooperated with Jim Jones in a way that guaranteed that the tragedy would eventually occur. All that was needed was a tipping point, which just happened to occur on November 18, 1978, when a threat to that cooperation, and to the beliefs that supported the cult, triggered a sense that all was lost. Yet, to the very end, cooperation prevailed as ordinary members who had trusted Jones were killed if they were reluctant to drink the Kool Aid.
In the case of the tragedy of Jonestown, there was trust and cooperation within the People’s Temple. But there was also cooperation between the leadership of the State and the leadership of the People’s Temple. Even if there was little trust between the leadership of the State and the leadership of the People’s Temple, there was something else that was also a powerful force: There was an alignment of interests, as both Jones and the local politicians were passionate about the ideology they shared, and both putatively wanted that ideology to translate into (respectively) a communist community and a Marxist-Leninist country.
The interests that were at issue were non-pecuniary, but we (now) know how powerful a mixture of beliefs and ideologies can be. When aligned they can lead to a Jonestown tragedy, just as they could lead to the election by freedom loving people of a president with autocratic instincts. The question before us should not be whether Jonestown can be a tourism product (it certainly could), but it’s whether we can learn, especially as a society.
A low probability, high-impact event occurred in Jonestown because of a failure of our institutions and our politics. The People’s Temple were allowed to operate as a state within a State on account of an alignment of interests. The level of cooperation made the very unlikely happen: The remarkable Jonestown project as well as the horrific Jonestown tragedy. We didn’t ask questions, but rather, we provided a shield of opacity. And of course, we defended the 30,000 acre lease that was given to the People’s Temple.
2. As apparently appreciated by Jones himself, people are not always able to learn from the past. A wonderful opportunity to learn from Uruguay’s experience with renewable energy and energy transition has been created by the University of Guyana GREEN Institute (UGGI), in the form of a Webinar tomorrow (Friday, December 13, 2024).
As Director of the UGGI, I have diligently ensured that a number of agencies, such as the Guyana Energy Authority, the Office of the Prime Minister, the IDB, the Office of Climate Change, the Private Sector Commission, received an invitation to join this carefully curated webinar.
I am taking a positive view of things, and remain hopeful that the words “energy transition” might not prevent invitees from seizing this learning opportunity by registering at https://qr.link/pPbf2v.
Sincerely,
Thomas B. Singh (PhD)
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12/14/24
Jonestown tour – Stabroek News (editorial)
It was in May this year that Wanderlust Tours first announced its intention of mounting overnight tours to the Jonestown site. At the time the report slid by largely unremarked, but in the last two weeks or so the proposal has generated considerable debate in our letters column. It is not the only time such a proposition has been given an airing, but on the first occasion it was dismissed as being both macabre and improper.
Ms Roselyn Sewcharran of Wanderlust Tours has said in a letter to this newspaper that Jonestown is part of Guyana’s history, and at least where that is concerned she is correct. Some of our letter writers have tended to regard the tragedy of November 18, 1978 as being solely an American episode which just happened to play out on Guyanese soil. But the truth is more complex.
Jim Jones made his application to come to create a settlement in this country in 1973 through the agency of Claude Worrell, the honorary Guyanese consul in California. According to the New York Times of December 24, 1978, he came here with four members of his Temple to argue his case. The appeal of Guyana was that it was non-white and 75 per cent of his following was African-American; it was English-speaking and most important, it was socialist.
The proposal was that although the community would be supported by the economically profitable San Francisco branch, it eventually would provide subsistence from its own farm crops. The idea involved the commune coming to support 200 people, but as all the sources relate a crisis was precipitated by the importation of 800 people in 1977.
Forbes Burnham seems to have detailed Ptolemy Reid, who was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and National Development to listen to Jones’s proposal. According to various writers he was impressed, particularly with the Temple’s socialist views, and appears to have had no reservations about recommending a group which had money, wanted to pursue agriculture and espoused a political approach not so far removed from that of the Guyana government. In addition there were the recommendations from US Democratic Senators, Congressmen and Mayors, although not Rosalynn Carter, as Mr Hamilton Green has maintained; that was a letter written later which Mr Kit Nascimento says he saw.
Burnham’s motivation for agreement has never been a secret: after failing to persuade Guyanese to settle near the border he thought that having American citizens there would act as a real disincentive to Caracas in terms of invasion. So in 1974, the Temple was granted its lease of land.
The details of how the relationship evolved, however, are not so clear. A number of local officials had dealings with the Temple, and various laws were breached. In its brief account of Guyana government involvement the group which investigated the tragedy for the US House of Representatives Committee of Foreign Affairs listed the People’s Temple being allowed to bring in items outside normal Customs procedures. These included large sums of money and guns in suitcases and false-bottomed crates, in addition, according to other sources, to the importations in the Cudjoe, Jonestown’s boat in the North-West. There was also, claimed the report, the compromising of immigration procedures, and the ‘liaisons’ between Temple women and Guyana officials, the one publicly known being that between Guyana’s US ambassador and Paula Adams.
Various US newspaper accounts following the tragedy reported interviews with anonymous Guyanese officials, some of whose concerns prior to the tragedy were overruled by central authorities, but no one has ever put together the full Guyanese side of the story. The Congressional committee was not allowed by the government here to interview Guyanese officials in the course of its investigations, and some of its allegations in this regard remain classified.
The plan Ms Sewcharran has for her tour involves identifying the socio-political factors which led to the creation and tragic end of Jonestown, its impact on global history and the lessons to be learned from it. Exactly how this would be better accomplished by shunting people around an abandoned site with commentary from a guide rather than sitting in a living room reading the voluminous literature on the subject is unclear. Whatever it is, it is not the full story from Guyana’s point of view. Presumably the Guyanese element, if there is any, might come from recollections of local people in Port Kaituma of their interactions with the group.
And at the moment there really is very little to see, other than bits of a cassava mill, pieces of the main pavilion and a rusted tractor, according to the Associated Press, which also quoted Mr Gerry Gouveia as saying, “We should reconstruct the home of Jim Jones, the main pavilion and other buildings that were there.”
Once that is done – if it is done – then it would definitely be for the purposes of tourism and its profits. But there is a distinction between facilitating the relatives and friends of those who died as well as researchers to visit the site, and transforming it into a regular tourist destination. The latter represents a standard money-making product which will be advertised, and names like ‘thanatourism’ or ‘dark tourism’ will not alter that fact.
It should be remembered too that this is not a site of murder-suicide; bar Jim Jones and his henchmen who shot themselves it is a place of mass murder. Seventy people were identified by Dr Leslie Mootoo in company with US witnesses as not drinking the cyanide-laced drink, but as having been murdered, while the children certainly could not be said to have committed suicide. But then nor could the others who drank. People who are brainwashed, threatened, lied to, sometimes beaten and sleep deprived do not take rational decisions; they were manipulated into killing themselves – it was murder by another means.
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, including one or two Guyanese like the small Amerindian boy from the local area. Mr Neville Bissember came nearest to an appropriate response when he suggested a memorial at Port Kaituma Airstrip to Congressman Ryan and others who were shot there.
This principle could be extended to Jonestown, with a memorial including the names of the victims perhaps. That would be a mark of respect, which a grand tour would not be. 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, but that is a topic for research, not a tour.
Former Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who was wounded during the shootings on the Airstrip, told KGO, an ABC News affiliate, that the proposal differed from a memorialised museum, and that it was inappropriate to “aggrandize that kind of cult activity”. She went on to say: “It’s such a bad story, such a horrible story. I don’t think you learn lessons by creating an adventure activity, wanderlust adventure!”
Wanderlust Tours might like to mull the word ‘Respect’.
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12/14/24
For me Jonestown should be left alone undisturbed – Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
Much is being said since it was announced to open up Jonestown as a tourist destination site. There are similarities between the Jonestown tragedy and the Titanic tragedy, though their scales are different. Since the finding of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic, several years ago, there has been several expeditions to the site, though not as a tourist destination. The last expedition, ended tragically. It is argued the Titanic resting at the bottom of the Atlantic, now being disintegrated rapidly, should be left undisturbed for the souls lost in the tragedy. But there continues to be expeditions being planned and in the making to the site. The debate will continue whether sites of horrendous tragedies should be opened up for public display. For me Jonestown like the Titanic should be left alone, undisturbed, in memory of those who lost their lives so tragically.
Sincerely,
Shamshun Mohamed
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12/18/24
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 that “our work has involved extensive research, fact checking, interviews and community engagement” and claims that 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 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
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12/19/24
Previous Jonestown projects of a commercial nature were rejected – Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
As one of two persons who was involved in several aspects of Jonestown that is still alive, and who Forbes Burnham assigned the responsibility to deal with the many post Jonestown tragedy events, I absolutely support the contents of the letter titled “No justifiable comparison between Auschwitz Memorial and what Ms. Sewcharran plans for Jonestown,” published in today’s Stabroek News December 18, 2024 written by Kit Nasciemento. May I add that it is not the first time that private sector developers have sought to use this human tragedy for money-making. It was rejected then for good reasons.
Sincerely,
Hamilton Green
Elder
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01/05/25
The victims of Wismar deserve closure
Dear Editor,
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project (Jonestown) was the subject of recent discussions in the local media. A comprehensive history of the 1978 mass murder/suicide has been compiled by the San Diego State University (SDSU): http://jonestown.sdsu.edu. Eusi Kwayana authored a book on Jonestown, which I reviewed some time ago. I agree with Kit Nascimento that a private tour company may choose to exploit Jonestown for profit, but the Guyana Government should not. Tourists may be more inclined to visit Guyana should the government lobby the World Heritage Committee to make permanent our five UNESCO designated landmarks.
Renewed interest in Jonestown is a reminder that we cannot escape from collective traumas of the past. Like Jonestown and Mahdia, Linden, a vibrant enclave of economic development in the 1960s, bears the scars of two national tragedies – the anti-Indian violence in Wismar in May and the Son Chapman river launch explosion at Hurudaia in July 1964. In the latter, 43 Africans died. Cheddi Jagan referred to the anti-Indian acts of May 23-26, 1964, as a “massacre.” Dr. Davies-Webb of Mackenzie Hospital acknowledged that on July 7, five Indians among 300 re-invited by Demba were killed before police could conduct an investigation into the explosion. No evidence of human subversion was ever established as the cause of the explosion.
Under Chapter 59 of the Commission of Inquiry Ordinance, a COI was gazetted, with meetings held at 252 Thomas and Murray streets, commencing on October 31, 1964. Commissioners were tasked with investigating the “disturbances which took place at Wismar, Christianburg, and Mackenzie… investigate the conduct of the Security Forces…and to determine the number of deaths and the extent of injury, loss, and damage.” The Commission met for 19 days, interrogated 86 witnesses (6 on camera), and recalled 8 for further testimony. The COI Report concluded that: “We have come to the conclusion that the disturbances which took place in the Wismar-Christianburg-Mackenzie area on May 25th, 1964, were politically and racially inspired… the thorough-going destruction of East Indian property, and the fact that the security forces were in no case able to apprehend arsonists force us to conclude that the destruction was not ‘spontaneous’ but was organised, and well organised.”
The attacks were precipitated by the murder of an elderly African couple in Buxton on May 21. Richard Mohammad Khan, an 18-year-old PYO supporter from Georgetown visiting his family (of seven), and Paul Mirgin, owner of a general store in Wismar who operated a tug boat with his wife and four sons, were murdered. Their families resided in Valley of Tears, now renamed Victory Valley. Two Africans died, Byron Wharton (trapped in a burning building) and Gussie English was shot by police while “involved in looting.” The father of PPP Senator, Christina Ramjattan was also killed (May 28th).
The COI allocated responsibility for the Wismar 1964 tragedy among several individuals: the PNC representative in Wismar (Robert Jordan), members of the BG Police Force and the BG Volunteer Force, Commissioner of Police, PPP Senator from Section C, Christianburg (Christina Ramjattan), Assistant District Commissioner (Patrick Bender), Chairman of the Local Authority (Festus Adams), Government Dispenser and Sub-Registrar of Births and Deaths in the area (Albert Jairam), a known criminal nicknamed “Banga Mary,” among others. The unarmed Demba constabulary and the British Army (in Guyana since the 1962 Black Friday riots) patrolled the area after May 26, the day Indians were evacuated to the Ruimveldt Industrial Site by the MV Barima and RH Carr.
Readers may contend that national traumas should remain buried in the archives because the politics of the 1960s still inflame primordial sentiments. Indeed, a 2008 UN-funded study conducted by Help and Shelter and Red Thread (with Alissa Trotz as lead investigator) interrogated residents from Wismar and concluded that the “The violence against Indian-Guyanese in Wismar, and specifically the sexual assault of women and girls appear to have been wiped clean from the memories of African-Guyanese, while for Indian-Guyanese they remain stark as an unforgivable assault on the whole community.” Those who argue that Wismar 1964 should be silenced must consider two observations.
First, President David Granger was instrumental in erecting a memorial for the victims of Son Chapman. The motto etched on the Son Chapman Monument on the Wismar waterfront echoes Santayana’s warning: “Those who forget the lessons of history do so at our own peril.” To date, nothing has ever been done in memory of the Wismar refugees, who left everything behind (including land). Yet, prominent speakers at the annual Son Chapman commemoration never mentioned the anti-Indian acts of May 1964, thereby contributing to the silence of atrocities committed against their fellow humanity.
Second, Wismar 1964 and Son Chapman, can potentially contribute to reconciliatory national dialogue. In a country where race politics persists and national dialogue is absent (including handshakes!), where politicians often eschew moral responsibility, and in the face of an approaching election that will surely reveal our fractured society, a younger generation ought not be held hostage to our historical aberrations.
Both Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton and Linden Mayor Sharma Solomon acknowledged that the events of May 1964 (and Son Chapman) can potentially contribute positively to a national dialogue but object strongly to the word “massacre.” Their thinking resonated with the narrative of the Commissioners, who noted that “When one considers the number of East Indians evacuated, the large number of Africans in the area, and the negligible opposition which the attackers encountered, the number of fatalities was indeed very small.” However, the level of violence, property destruction and trauma directed at the minority Indian community cannot be reduced to casualties alone. As per the COI, “more than 200 houses and business places” were destroyed, and “more than 3000” families became refugees. On May 25 alone, “there were 57 cases of assault, including rape” and “197 houses were destroyed” in addition to “cases of looting.”
As former President Donald Ramotar reminds us, Wismar 1964 is embedded in the divisive stain of colonialism. This reality imposes considerations that should guide any national discourse. One, references to Wismar 1964 should not be centered around victimhood. The COI noted that there was no record of Indian reprisals, but some Africans, at great risk to their own lives, provided shelter and safe passage to Indians during their moment of siege. Two, reconciliatory dialogue, as with the South African experience, should not be about good versus evil. British Guiana was in the throes of a high stake competitive political struggle. Indians were also engaged in retributions against Africans. Three, reconciliatory dialogue should not be viewed as an occasion for establishing claims to moral superiority.
The “Dubai” of the Caribbean promises a bright future for our young people – but we ought to acknowledge our growing pains. The victims of Wismar deserve closure.
Sincerely,
Baytoram Ramharack