Recalling Jonestown, Guyanese View Influx of Foreigners Warily
November 24, 2002
Razor grass, vines and a few wild daisies cover the area where Jim Jones urged more than 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide.
Few care to remember the horrors of Nov. 18, 1978.
But painful memories are reawakening with a new influx of foreigners — U.S. missionaries and wildcat Brazilian gold miners — to the remote jungle outpost.
“I see strange faces and I feel scared again,” said Caroline George, 37, whose three siblings died at Jonestown. “Everything is different in Guyana, but it somehow feels the same.”
Residents of Port Kaituma, the nearest town, about six miles away, asked themselves the other day what the business might be of a Nigerian who stopped at a diner for some fried chicken, or of a Colombian who landed on the airstrip in a private plane. Read more >>