Guyana is revisiting a dark history nearly half a century after U.S. Rev. Jim Jones and more than 900 of his followers died in the rural interior of the South American country.
It was the largest suicide-murder in recent history, and a government-backed tour operator wants to open the former commune now shrouded by lush vegetation to visitors, a proposal that is reopening old wounds, with critics saying it would disrespect victims and dig up a sordid past. Jordan Vilchez, who grew up in California and was moved into the Peoples Temple commune at age 14, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from the U.S. that she has mixed feelings about the tour.
New roads, schools and hotels are being built across the capital, Georgetown, and beyond, and a country that rarely saw tourists is now hoping to attract more of them. An obvious attraction is Jonestown, argued Astill Paul, the co-pilot of a twin-engine plane that flew U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan of California and a U.S. news crew to a village near the commune a day before hundreds died on Nov. 18, 1978. He witnessed gunmen fatally shoot Ryan and four others as they tried to board the plane on Nov.
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