On Nov. 18, 1978, Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana. PHOTO COURTESY OF HISTORY.COM

Nearly half a century ago, an American settlement in the heart of the Guyana jungle extinguished itself in a tragedy that took the lives, according to a former government official, of 914 people — mostly African Americans – including 276 children. The government waited 31 years before formally acknowledging what is still the world’s worst event of its kind.

A “simple, white stone plaque” was unveiled “with little fanfare” at the site in 2009, Associated Press Guyana correspondent Bert Wilkinson reported. The government, he noted. “had resisted creating a memorial, believing it would be a distasteful reminder of an incident that brought a grim fame to the impoverished and sparsely populated former British colony.”

Those who attended the unpublicized unveiling of the marker included the country’s then tourism minister Manniram Prashad and Karen Williams, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy, Wilkinson reported. The inscription reads: “In memory of the victims of the Jonestown tragedy, November 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana.”

“I hope that this simple and very reverent service today and monument will serve to help heal those wounds in both our nations,” the Guyana government’s information service quoited Williams as saying, according to Wilkinson.

But over the past dozen or so years, several suggestions have been made as to what to do with the site. A New York investor – who was not named – “drew up an investment plan with a Jonestown survivor to create a 10-acre project including a museum, a restaurant, a café, a souvenir shop and living quarters for employees,” New York Times reporter Simon Romero reported in 2010. Fortunately, that project failed.

More recent proposals have centered on whether to convert the long abandoned the site into a “dark tourism” destination or as a place for commemorating those who died after they drank from a half-drum of Flavor Aid laced with cyanide – some reports claim they committed suicide, others insist that they were forced to do so at gunpoint.

The deaths marked the end of an ambitious enterprise by Jim Jones, who led his Peoples Temple followers on a 4,400-mile exodus from California to escape relentless media and other pressure over his leadership. Over four years, they cleared the land, cultivated a large garden and embarked on small-scale industries on the mostly inaccessible land which the government granted to Jones to establish his sanctuary.

PBS reported that the lease for the 3,800 acres stipulated that one-fifth had to be cleared for cultivation, which became the Jonestown Agricultural Project. Within three years, members built “60 cottages, large kitchens and food storage areas, laundry rooms, an infirmary, and two schoolhouses, as well as an open-air pavilion where meetings could be held,” PBS reported The dream turned into a nightmare a year later when California Congressman Leo Ryan, on a fact-finding visit, was killed, leading to the mass deaths, an eventually for which Jones had drilled them almost nightly.

Most recently, some Guyana government officials have expressed support for at least one proposal. A tour operator “would ferry visitors to the farflung village of Port Kaituma nestled in the lush jungles of northern Guyana,” Wilkinson and colleague Danica Coto reported earlier this month, referring to the hinterland village nearest the site. “It’s a trip available only by boat, helicopter or plane; rivers instead of roads connect Guyana’s interior.” From Port Kaituma, the tourists would have to travel another six or seven miles “via a rough and overgrown dirt trail” to get to the site.

The government’s Tourism Authority and the country’s Tourism and Hospitality Association support that proposal, the AP reported. Tourism Minister Oneidge Walrond acknowledged there was “some level of push back” but said that the project was already under way, with the government helping to clear the land “to ensure a better product can be marketed.” Walrond acknowledged that the Cabinet will most likely have to give final approval but added, “It certainly has my support. It is possible. After all, we have seen what Rwanda has done with that awful tragedy as an example.”

Walrond was referring to a genocide memorial erected in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to mark the 100-day civil war in the East African country in which members of the Hutu majority massacred members of the minority Tutsis in 1994.

Rose Sewcharran, director of Wanderlust Adventures, which would take tourists to the site, supports Walrond’s position. “We think it’s about time,” she told the AP. “This happens all over the world. We have multiple examples of dark, morbid tourism around the world, including Auschwitz and the Holocaust museum.”

But the comparisons are not accurate and the “push back” is strong.

University of Guyana law professor Neville Bissember, who had held a variety of foreign service positions with the government, asked, appropriately, in a letter published in the local Stabroek News, “What part of Guyana’s nature and culture is represented in a place where death and mass suicide and other atrocities and human rights violations were perpetuated against a submissive group of American citizens, which had nothing to do with Guyana nor Guyanese?” Rejecting the “ghoulish and bizarre idea” of a tourism destination, Bissember proposed, instead, erecting “a monument or memorial of some kind” at the Port Kaituma airstrip “to celebrate the lives of Congressman Ryan and the others who were shot there.” In that way, “all who use the airstrip at that location would get a chance to pay respects to the fallen heroes, without making the trek to visit and ‘tour’ the creepy venue where an American cult of domination and evil had been allowed to thrive.”

Christopher “Kit” Nascimento, who served as Minister of State, also denounced the idea of “dark tourism” in a letter to Stabroek News. He described the tragedy as an “ugly stain on the history of our country” which “should not be promoted” as “a tourist attraction.”

Like Bissember, Nascimento asked why Guyana should want to “show off a place in our country as an attraction to be proud of where 914 people died, including 276 children, were murdered, forced by Jim Jones to commit suicide…” He acknowledged that there are those who believed that “while history, however unpleasant it may be, should not be buried” but he, too, asked, “Do we have to promote, advertise and sell it when we have so much more beauty and attraction to be proud if?”

Some supporters of the tourism idea had stressed the economic advantage for Guyana but that was before massive oil deposits were discovered in 2015 that are now producing billions of dollars annually for the country.

New York Times reporter Simon Romero, on a visit to the site, found support for the tourism proposal in Port Kaituma but perhaps the most tasteful suggestion came from Carlton Daniels, a shopkeeper, who called for “something more ambitious.” He argued that “a full-blown memorial of sorts” should have been developed “years ago” and added, “Imagine, Jonestown could become a worldrenowned center for the study of cults and what makes them tick.”

That is a sensible suggestion. The site could be used not for traditional tourism but as a destination for those interested in learning about cults. Perhaps Bissember can use his influence at the University of Guyana to have it establish such a program.

There was a sign at the entrance to the Jonestown community hall that read, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it,” a quotation from Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s 1905 book “The Life of Reason.” It is not known why Jones used that quotation. It could be that he was unintentionally sending a message to future generations, such as the one of today, not to follow any leader blindly because, as history has shown, the result could be tragic.

Mohamed Hamaludin, a Guyana native, was one of the first two journalists whom the Guyana government allowed to visit Jonestown, on Monday, Nov. 20, 1978, two days after the tragedy.