JONESTOWN SURVIVOR – What if Congressman Ryan had NOT visited Jonestown?
What if Congressman Ryan Had NOT Visited Jonestown?
A question that comes up often, and did again today, from a researcher/friend, is:
Would the deaths in Jonestown have happened without Congressman Leo Ryan's visit tipping Jim over the edge?
Here are my 2 cents: Basically, there was a lot going on affecting Jonestown and Jim in the summer of 1978 –
Jim was increasingly paranoid, mentally ill, isolated, and more addicted to drugs
Jim learned that Jonestown would never be self-sufficient for the residents – 1,000 and another 1,000 waiting to come over – his original plan was for 600 but he oversold it. The rain forest soil would never produce enough food
Cottage industries – hill rice, clothing, stuffed animals, carving wooden animals, soap, etc. were sold and exhanged in communities
No other country had cooperated in putting together a plan for the group to move there and stay intact with Jim as the leader
He had two top misresses/secretaries – with many secrets – defect and go public back in the USA
The Guyanese were less cooperative
the Concerned relatives were raising everyone's awareness about Jonestown
SF newspapers were beginning to investigate who Jim was, what he had been doing
The US Government – this time Rep. Leo Ryan – insisted that they could come and go at will
Nine families were in the Guyanese Courts to protest that Jim had taken their children to Guyana without proper guardianship/papers and the Guyanese government had told Jim to lay low while they dealt with that
There actually were some plans for Guyanese to go into Jonestown to find these children and bring them out (verified by some of the Guyanese I met last March 2018 when I visited Guyana
Jim was totally unstable and surrounded by people who enabled him alll along the way, including giving him drugs and supporting his disfunction
There were Jonestown residents who were insisting on returning to the US
Jim NEVER would admit to making an error in judgement.
So – the question remains – Would the murders in Jonestown have happened without Ryan's trip? I don't have an answer. But, things were falling apart with no viable solution from Jim's point of view – since he could not