Jonestown 30 years later - SPTO's Blog

SPTO's Blog

Jonestown 30 years later

Posted on November 18, 2008 at 11:28 AM.

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As some of you may be aware my family background is from the West Indian country of Guyana. Most people I tell that to have no idea where it is but if you tell people of a certain age about the Jonestown Massacre they'll know where it is then.

My parents were both from Guyana and it was once a pretty thriving country relatively speaking as it was part of the British Empire. However, by the 1960s things got murky as Guyana tried to carve out independence for itself. Now i'm not going to expect you guys to know the complexities of the situation but basically there were two men of differing ideologies that were at the forefront of the Guyanese independent movement. One was a US educated socialist named Cheddi Jagan. The other was Linden Forbes Burnham. Burnham wasn't as well known to people outside of Guyana but they'd soon learn that he was even more autocratic and communist then Jagan ever was.

As most of us know at this time the US was really into the Domino Theory of communism and when Cheddi Jagan had attained power in Guyana they were fearful of communism spreading further. The CIA led an underground coup that got Jagan out of power and more or less installed Burnham as leader. Burnham was the one person who destroyed all progress in Guyana. At first, he was moderate in tone and played nice. He was able to get Guyana out from under the yoke of British rule and declared independent. However shortly after Burnham took power he enacted sweeping authoritarian control with a National Security Act that made it legal for search, seize and arrests of anyone.

He increasingly moved to the left of the political spectrum and had strong ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Burnham even banned all imports to the country which included things like flour and many varieties of rice. He also nationalized foreign owned and operated major industries in the country which severely curtailed the private sector's share of the economy. It was Burnham's policies that led to the mass exodus of Guyanese people in the '80s.

My parents were one of the early ones to leave the country. I've heard stories of how there would be shooting in the streets mainly by the military and how there were food shortages and roving blackouts throughout the country. Burnham's rule had completely destroyed the infrastructure and the will of the people in many ways. As an aside though, Cheddi Jagan did get a measure of revenge as he came out of the wilderness and became president of Guyana in the '90s. His rule in the '90s helped to re-establish some order in Guyana and to bring about better economic policies. At this time Jagan and the country of Guyana was given a formal apology by a representative (can't remember) of the Kennedy Administration over the forced coup of Jagan and what it did to Guyana.

I've gone totally off the topic but at least you get some sense of where my parents lived and such. Today is the 30th anniversary of Jonestown which is what the country is most known for. Here's a link to an excellent MSNBC article

Jonestown 30 years later