The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name Jonestown, was a remote commune in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American religious organization led by Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, 918"How many people died on November 18?" . Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. people died in a coordinated mass murder-suicide across three locations: the Jonestown compound, a nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and the group's headquarters in Georgetown, making "Jonestown" internationally infamous. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.
A total of 909 individuals died in Jonestown itself, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, many of whom were injected against their will. Jones and some Peoples Temple members referred to the act as a "revolutionary suicide" on an audio tape of the event, and in prior recorded discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others, including U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, by Temple members at Port Kaituma, an act that Jones ordered. Four other Temple members committed murder-suicide in Georgetown at Jones's command.
Terms used to describe the deaths in Jonestown and Georgetown have evolved over time. Many contemporary media accounts after the events called the deaths a mass suicide. In contrast, later sources refer to the deaths with terms such as mass murder-suicide, a massacre, or mass murder.In the documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, former member Stanley Clayton refused to "use the term 'suicide'" because "that man [Jones] was killing us"; another member, Tim Carter, said that the victims were "fucking slaughtered" and that their deaths had nothing to do with "revolutionary suicide"."Murder or Suicide: What I Saw" by Tim Carter . Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. Seventy or more individuals at Jonestown were injected with poison, a third of the victims were minors, and armed guards had been ordered to shoot anyone who attempted to flee the settlement as Jones lobbied for suicide."Why 900 Died in Guyana" by Carey Winfrey . The New York Times, February 25, 1979"How many children and minors died in Jonestown? What were their ages?" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University.
Origins
The Peoples Temple was formed by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1955. The movement purported to practice what it called "apostolic socialism." In doing so, the Temple preached that "those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenmentsocialism."Jones, Jim. "Transcript of Recovered FBI tape Q 1053." Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. Jones had held an interest in Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, and would later frequently praise Stalin and Vladimir Lenin as heroes. He was also upset with persecution against the Communist Party USA. In the early 1960s, Jones visited Guyana – then a British colony – while on his way to establishing a short-lived Temple mission in Brazil.
After Jones received considerable criticism in Indiana for his integrationist views, the Temple moved to Redwood Valley, California, in 1965. In the early 1970s, the Temple opened other branches in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and would eventually move its headquarters to San Francisco.
With the move to San Francisco came increasing political and civic involvement by leaders of the Temple. They earned high levels of approval from the local government. After the group's participation proved instrumental in the mayoral election victory of George Moscone in 1975, Moscone appointed Jones as Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority.Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. PBS.org.
Increasing public support in California gave Jones access to several high-ranking political figures, including vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale and First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Guests at a large 1976 testimonial dinner for Jones included Governor Jerry Brown, Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally and California Assemblyman Willie Brown, among others.
Jonestown established Selection and establishment of Guyanese land
In the fall of 1973, after critical newspaper articles by Lester Kinsolving and the defection of eight Temple members, Jones and Temple attorney Timothy Stoen prepared an "immediate action" contingency plan for responding to a police or media crackdown. The plan listed various options, including fleeing to Canada or to a "Caribbean missionary post" such as Barbados or Trinidad. For its Caribbean missionary post, the Temple quickly chose Guyana, conducting research on its economy and extradition treaties with the United States. In October 1973, the directors of the Temple passed a resolution to establish an agricultural mission there.
The Temple chose Guyana, in part, because of the group's own socialist politics, which were moving further to the left during the selection process.Paranoia And Delusions , Time, December 11, 1978 Former Temple member Tim Carter stated that the reasons for choosing Guyana were the Temple's view of a perceived dominance of racism and multinational corporations in the U.S. government. According to Carter, the Temple concluded that Guyana, an English-speaking, socialist country with a government including prominent black leaders, would afford black Temple members a peaceful place to live.
Later, Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham stated that Jones may have "wanted to use cooperatives as the basis for the establishment of socialism, and maybe his idea of setting up a commune meshed with that." Jones thought that Guyana was small, poor and independent enough for him to easily obtain influence and official protection. He proved skillful in presenting the Guyanese government the benefits of allowing the Temple to establish a settlement in the country. One of the main tactics was to speak of the advantages of their American presence near Guyana's disputed border with Venezuela; this idea seemed promising to the Burnham government, who feared a military incursion by Venezuela.Poster 2019Seconds From Disaster, "Jonestown Cult Suicide", aired 5 November 2012
In 1974, after traveling to an area of northwestern Guyana with Guyanese officials, Jones and the Temple negotiated a lease of over of land in the jungle located west of the Guyanese capital of Georgetown.Timeline: The Life and Death of Jim Jones. PBS.org. Retrieved 9 April 2007. In 1976, Guyana approved the lease (retroactive to April 1974). The site, located near the disputed border with Venezuela, was isolated and had soil of low fertility. The nearest body of water was away by muddy roads.
Before mass migration
As five hundred members began the construction of Jonestown, the Temple encouraged more to relocate to the settlement.Walliss, John, Apocalyptic Trajectories : Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World, Oxford, New York, 2004, Jones saw Jonestown as both a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary" from media scrutiny. Jones reached an agreement to guarantee that Guyana would permit Temple members' mass migration. To do so, he stated that they were "skilled and progressive," showed off an envelope he claimed contained $500,000 and stated that he would invest most of the group's assets in Guyana. The relatively large number of immigrants to Guyana overwhelmed the government's small but stringent immigration infrastructure in a country where immigrants had outweighed locals.. Guyanese immigration procedures were compromised to inhibit the departure of Temple defectors and curtail visas of Temple opponents.United States Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Staff Investigative Group (1979) "The Assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana, Tragedy. Report of a Staff Investigative Group to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives", U.S. Government Printing Office.
Jonestown was held up as a benevolent communist community, with Jones stating: "I believe we're the purest communists there are."Jones, Jim. "Transcript of Recovered FBI tape Q 50." Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. Jones's wife, Marceline, described Jonestown as "dedicated to live for socialism, total economic and racial and social equality. We are here living communally." Jones wanted to construct a model community and claimed that Burnham "couldn't rave enough about us, the wonderful things we do, the project, the model of socialism."Jones, Jim. "Transcript of Recovered FBI tape Q 833." Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. But he did not permit members to leave Jonestown without his express prior permission.
The Temple established offices in Georgetown and conducted numerous meetings with Burnham and other Guyanese officials. In 1976, Temple member Michael Prokes requested that Burnham receive Jones as a foreign dignitary along with other "high ranking U.S. officials." Jones traveled to Guyana with Dymally to meet with Burnham and Guyanese Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Willis. In that meeting, Dymally agreed to pass on the message to the U.S. State Department that Guyana wanted to keep an open door to cooperation with the U.S. He followed up that meeting with a letter to Burnham stating that Jones was "one of the finest human beings" and that Dymally was "tremendously impressed" by his visit to Jonestown.
Temple members took pains to stress their loyalty to Burnham's People's National Congress Party. One Temple member, Paula Adams, became romantically involved with Laurence "Bonny" Mann, Guyana's ambassador to the U.S. Jones bragged about other female Temple members he referred to as "public relations women" giving all for the cause in Jonestown.After the massacre at Jonestown, Adams married Mann. On 24 October 1983, Mann fatally shot both Adams and the couple's child, and then fatally shot himself. (Weingarten, Gene. "The Peekaboo Paradox." The Washington Post. January 22, 2006.) Burnham's wife Viola was also a strong advocate of the Temple.
Later, Burnham stated that Guyana allowed the Temple to operate in the manner it did based on the references of Moscone, Mondale and Rosalynn Carter. He also said that, when Deputy Minister Ptolemy Reid traveled to Washington, D.C. in September 1977 to sign the Panama Canal Treaties, Mondale, by this point the U.S. Vice President, asked him, "How's Jim?", which indicated to Reid that Mondale had a personal interest in Jones's well-being.
Investigation and mass migration
In the summer of 1977, Jones and several hundred Temple members moved to Jonestown to escape building pressure from San Francisco media investigations of the community. Jones left the same night that an editor at New West magazine read to him an article to be published by Marshall Kilduff, which detailed allegations of abuse by former Temple members.Kilduff, Marshall and Phil Tracy."Inside Peoples Temple." Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. August 1, 1977. After the mass migration, Jonestown became overcrowded. Jonestown's population was slightly under 900 at its peak in 1978.
After mass migration Many members of the Temple believed that Guyana would be, as Jones promised, a paradise or utopia. After Jones arrived, however, Jonestown life significantly changed. Entertaining movies from Georgetown that the settlers had watched were mostly canceled in favor of Soviet propaganda shorts and documentaries on American social problems.