Guyana jungle hides last Jonestown secrets
By Jeremy Smith
JONESTOWN, Guyana (Reuters) - A rusted tractor, cassava mill and scattered machinery parts are the visible remains of Jim Jones' notorious jungle camp where more than 900 Americans died in the worst mass cult suicide ever in 1978. But pull back the tangle of thorny undergrowth and one more memento of the massacre can still be found -- the vat used to ladle out a cyanide-laced drink that poisoned followers of his People's Temple, a macabre ritual that shocked the world. The vat was a galvanised drum filled with Kool-Aid grape drink mixed with potassium cyanide and potassium chloride, along with tranquilisers and sedatives. Once plastered across magazine covers worldwide against a backdrop of stacked-up corpses, it has now virtually rusted away into the earth. Jonestown itself is slowly sinking back into the jungle and taking with it, some say, an important lesson for mankind. Many Guyanese insist the jungle still holds hidden secrets and point out the government has never held a proper inquiry into what happened on the November night more than 20 years ago, which turned out to be the cult's horrifying final act. Lying deep in Guyana's steamy northwestern jungle frontier region with Venezuela, the sprawling Jonestown commune was designed to be remote. Nowadays the only access is by charter plane from the capital Georgetown to the logging centre of Port Kaituma, a one-hour trip over rain forest where coffee-coloured rivers occasionally cut through the thick carpet of green. A potholed dirt road, mainly used now by logging trucks kicking up huge clouds of dust, leads to the unmarked site some six miles (9.6 km) away. The jungle has reclaimed most of the fields once worked dawn-to-dusk by the Americans, but chilling reminders of Jonestown and its tragedy are not too far away. A dilapidated tractor and truck poke out of the tall grass and a thicket reveals a rusty part of the organ that followers say Jones used to play obsessively during religious services. The only other evidence Jonestown ever existed is a crate used for agricultural machinery parts with stenciled lettering "People's Temple Agricultural Mission - Port Kaituma." In Guyana, rumours abound about what may still be concealed at Jonestown. Over the years looters have made away with the most obvious items of value, but many Guyanese firmly believe in an underground treasure trove, most likely containing gold. Gerry Gouveia, a second lieutenant with Guyana's air force at the time, used to fly Jones to and from his isolated colony and was one of the first to reach it after the mass suicide. "There are still a lot of things hidden in the jungle although a lot of the stuff was stolen from here. There are a lot of questions still to be answered," he told Reuters during a tour of the site. "There was a lot of gold here. I actually flew a bag of gold out of here and it was collected by a private security firm. But where did it come from?" Gouveia, who now runs his own aircraft charter service based in Georgetown, said the commune was believed to have imported some 500 bags of cement but no concrete structure had ever been found in 20 years. "There's a lot of speculation about tunnels here. Somebody has to know. Guyana was really a haven for them, they were smuggling their guns and huge amounts of money," he said. Jones arrived in Guyana in the early 1970s claiming he was seeking sanctuary from persecution of the People's Temple by U.S. authorities. He persuaded the late President Forbes Burnham to allow him to create the commune, which he operated as a state-within-a-state, subservient only to him. Fed by alcohol and drugs, Jones' megalomania burst into evil flower in the suffocating heat of Guyana. Jonestown, according to survivors, was a work camp where Temple members were subjected to nightly harangues from a leader obsessed with imaginary threats from "traitors" and "mercenaries." Disobedience could bring punishment in "the Box," a stifling underground cubicle no bigger than a coffin, and any night could suddenly become a "White Night" -- Jones' code for a mass suicide drill. Guyanese say Jones also exercised an unnatural degree of influence in their country and smuggled cash, drugs and weapons with official connivance in return for financial and political support for Burnham's administration. Successive governments have disassociated themselves from the affair, saying it was a U.S. problem that had nothing to do with Guyana. "There are all kinds of weird stories about Jonestown...but there's never been a full-scale inquiry. It was all hush-hush and still is," said Sharief Khan, editor of the Guyana Chronicle, one of the leading daily newspapers. "Arms were being shipped in, medicinal drugs -- none of this came through official channels. They had ocean-going vessels, sea trawlers, which can do a run from Miami. Basically, they had official protection," he said. Gouveia said the area surrounding the river Kaituma leading to the coast is as poorly monitored today as it was in Jones' time and is favoured by drug smugglers. One theory often put forward for the Guyanese government's collusion with Jones was that it was eager to have an American presence close to the border with Venezuela, which has a long-standing claim on almost two-thirds of Guyana. "At the time there was a real threat and people really didn't know what Venezuela would do. But the government didn't think they would do anything with a lot of Americans living there," local television journalist Alexis Rodney said. Little if any effort has been made to preserve the camp and there are few visitors apart from an occasional treasure-seeker lured by the lingering rumours of hidden gold. Gouveia has lobbied for Guyana's government to turn Jonestown into a memorial to remind people about the dangers of cults, but so far his call has fallen on deaf ears. "There should be a memorial to preserve what happened, the fact that 900 people lost their lives here. It was hidden from a lot of people. We can't sweep this under the carpet -- this thing is bigger than all of us," he said. "A lot of people ask why we come back here, they say it was an American problem. Jonestown was one of the greatest human self-inflicted tragedies. To forget it is really to do what Jim Jones said." Jones had carved a sign over his altar at Jonestown, reading "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." The altar, along with the corrugated-roof pavilion where the cyanide drink was dished out, were both scavenged long ago. "There are still a lot of rumours and perceptions," Rodney said. "But the biggest question is whether there will even be a Jonestown to see in the next 10 years."
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