Deep in the Guyanese jungle, only a signpost and a nondescript plaque serve as reminders of a cult settlement where one of the most spine-chilling mass murder-suicides in modern history took place almost five decades ago.
“Welcome to the People’s Temple,” reads the green lettering on a sign above a red dirt road announcing the entrance to what was once Jonestown, a jungle utopia-turned-nightmare, where 914 adults and children died on November 18, 1978.
They were the followers of the US reverend-guru Jim Jones, who coerced them into committing suicide, urging parents to give their children poison, while others were shot trying to flee or forced to drink the deadly liquid.
The carnage highlighted the manipulative power cult leaders wield over their followers, and those who live nearby are torn between wanting to move on and wishing the site could serve as a lesson as to what went wrong.
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“There is really nothing to see, unless the place is cleared up, and you will see what remains on the ground in terms of old vehicles, tractors and other things,” said Fitz Duke, who lives in the remote nearby village of Port Kaituma.
He was 31 when the massacre occurred, and he recalls the presence of Jones and his following of poor African Americans, who worked hard to clear the jungle as they built what was meant to be a socialist, self-sufficient settlement on about 1,500 hectares in the middle of nowhere.
“They had a very good agricultural system,” Duke said, adding that local villagers would often work for the community.
“They had a lot of livestock. They were almost self-sufficient in terms of food for themselves. We used to visit often. They had a very good band, a lot of instruments,” he added.
However, while the community was billed as a non-racist, non-sexist, paradise on earth, it was run with an iron fist by Jones and his aides.
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Ex-cult members made claims of drugs use, hunger and sexual enslavement, saying Jones forced his followers to work from dawn to dusk, six days a week.
“You couldn’t just come and go as you like,” said Duke.
“They had a huge tower to see directly on the main road. And they always had men up there to watch with their binoculars.”
He said Jonestown guards with “bigger guns than the police” used to search the cars, and once stopped a police car, telling them “it wasn’t Guyana, it was Jonestown.”
Hundreds ‘brainwashed’
After complaints in the United States about the living conditions in the community, Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown on November 17, 1978, to investigate.
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A day later, as he prepared to board a plane home, Ryan was shot dead on the tarmac by Jones’s men, who also killed three journalists and a cult member who wanted to leave.
For Jones — who had long warned his followers of a looming assault by the US government and carried out sessions in which they and their children drank fake poison — there was no turning back.
He told his followers that Ryan was a CIA agent and that US Marines were preparing to attack the community.
A 45-minute recording found near his body would later reveal how he incited his followers to commit suicide in what he said was a “revolutionary act.”
“It’s still a wonder why and how one man could have so many hundreds of people brainwashed like that,” said Duke.
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Forty-four years later, only a white slab in the overgrowth bearing the words “in memory of the victims of the Jonestown massacre” bears testament to what happened at the site.
The signpost at the entrance to the community was put up to replace the old version sometime after the events.
‘A bad memory’
Duke is among those who would prefer the massacre be forgotten.
“I feel that it has done our country real, real bad. It put Guyana on the map for bad reasons. They should do away with it. They should give the land to farmers for them to cultivate it,” he said.
Local authorities did not wish to speak on the massacre.
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However, opposition official in Port Kaituma, Tiffnie Daniels, 31, said she would like to see the site become a place where visitors could “understand what happened.”
“There is just a monument and the jungle. But, if children want to study that, or people want to visit as a tourist site, there is nothing,” she added.
The Pope’s funeral procession through the center of Rome worries the Italian authorities
The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.
That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.
On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.
“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.
The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.
Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.
Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.
Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.
The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.
Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.
“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.
He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”
The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.
This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.
After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.
A group of the poor and a delegation of migrants will participate in the funeral and burial of the pope on Saturday
A group of poor and needy and a delegation of migrants and rescuers will be present at the funeral and burial of Pope Francis this Saturday, April 26, as a last tribute to the pontiff, who was always close to the most disadvantaged and homeless people.
“A group of poor and needy people will be present on the steps that lead to the Papal Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay the last tribute to Pope Francis before the burial of the coffin,” the Vatican reported in a statement on Thursday.
The Arab League supports Hamas handing over control of Gaza and weapons to the Palestinian Authority
The Arab League expressed on Thursday its support for the Hamas Islamist group handing over control of the Gaza Strip to the Government of the Palestinian National Authority (ANPA), of President Mahmud Abbas, who assured that he must be the only one who controls weapons and represents the Palestinians before the international community.
The pan-Arab organization expressed its position on Thursday in a statement issued after the Arab ministerial meeting held on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, coinciding with a claim by Abbas that the ANP assumes political control of Gaza, and that Hamas releases the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds and lay down their arms.
“The Council of the Arab League affirmed its support for President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision regarding the importance of achieving national (Palestinian) unity based on the commitment to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the main member of the ANP that governs in small areas of the occupied West Bank, said the statement of the organization composed of 22 states.
In the note, the agency avoided mentioning Hamas by name, although it stressed that the PLO is the “only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and invited all Palestinian factions to “comply with the political program and international obligations” of the ANP.
He also insisted that the different Palestinian factions “comply with the principle of a (only) system (of government), a law and a legitimate weapon, and allow the Government (of the ANP) to assume the responsibilities of governance in Gaza within the framework of the political and geographical unity of the Palestinian territory occupied (by Israel) in 1967”.
On the other hand, the statement “categorically rejected any form of displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, under any name, circumstance or justification, considering this part of the crime of genocide” against the inhabitants of the strip, where more than 51,000 people died in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
The Arab Foreign Ministers expressed, on the other hand, their support for the conference that France and Saudi Arabia plan to hold next June under the auspices of the UN to support the “two-state solution”, one Palestinian next to the Israeli.
They also showed their support for the Egyptian plan, supported last March by Arab and Islamic countries, for the reconstruction of Gaza, and “urging countries and financial institutions to quickly provide the financial support necessary for its implementation.”
Hamas has controlled Gaza since its militiamen expelled the forces of the ANP Government from the Strip in 2007, controlled by the secular group Fatah, also from Abbas and majority within the PLO.
The enmity between Hamas and Fatah resides, in addition to ideological differences, in the discrepancies that when facing the defense of a Palestinian State, since while Islamists advocate armed struggle and “resistance” against the Israeli occupation, the ANP opts for politics and negotiations.
