Not long ago, I visited the site of the world’s greatest mass suicide, in NW Guyana. Remote and derelict, it’s hard to imagine that up to 1,000 people had lived here.
Not long ago, I visited the site of the world’s greatest mass suicide, in NW Guyana. Remote and derelict, it’s hard to imagine that up to 1,000 people had lived here. The jungle has returned but, on the edge of a clearing, under the trees, I found what I was looking for: the leprous hulks of the three tractors (see photo), a boiler, half a dozen engine blocks, a vast workbench, and the crumbling chassis of an old army truck . Whatever else was happening in Jonestown at the moment it imploded, it was in throes of agricultural effort.
All around, the soil seemed to have boiled up, or been ransacked by badgers. ‘People,’ noted Duke, my local guide, ‘Looking for small scraps of metal.’ Further along, there was an old miner’s cabin, made from twigs. This was where Jones had his house, said Duke. We both peered through the twiggy framework. There was nothing there but ant-works and Tiger Teeth. Duke explained that, in the days following Jones’ death, looters had picked the place clean.
I’d also heard that they’d discovered a grisly, parallel economy; Jones lived quite differently to his disciples. Apart from the trappings of office – books, electric lights, a fridge full of del Monte fruit, a double bed, cotton sheets, and two dead mistresses – there was also a large quantity of Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate and Demerol. It was like a sort of pharmaceutical armoury, with every weapon you’d ever need in the practice of coercion …
(You can read more about my visit to Jonestown in Wild Coast
