Private tourism group offering (controversial) guided tours of site of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana after decades of abandonment
The Guyanese site of the Jonestown massacre, where over 900 people either died by mass suicide or murder in connection with the Jim Jones-led cult in 1978, has opened for tourism.
After decades of abandonment, a private tourism company in the South American country of Guyana announced plans to host guided tours of the former compound in late 2024, a decision that was met with controversy at the time.
“We think it is about time. This happens all over the world,” Rose Sewcharran, director of Wanderlust Adventures, the tourism company providing the tours, told the Associated Press in 2024. “We have multiple examples of dark, morbid tourism around the world, including Auschwitz and the Holocaust Museum.”
Months later, Wanderlust — with approval from the Guyanese government — is offering the Jonestown Memorial Tour to tourists, including flights to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown and an hour-long van trip to the sparse remains of the Peoples Temple settlement, the New York Times reports.
Longtime congresswoman Jackie Speier, who survived a 1978 attack in Guyana — she was shot multiple times while serving as an aide to U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, who was killed by Peoples Temple members when he traveled to Guyana to investigate claims of people being held against their will — was among those who protested Wanderlust’s decision.
“I was horrified because it doesn’t deserve to be a tourist attraction,” Speier told KTVU in December 2024. “And for a company to think this is adventure tourism is missing the mark.”
The inaugural tour of Jonestown included two of Sewcharran’s own relatives, two journalists, and two tourists, the New York Times reported. Sewcharran added that the goal of the tour was not sensationalism but exploring “the dangers of manipulation, unchecked authority and the circumstances that led to this devastating event.”