May 28th, 2010 - Original Proposal
This project will involve visits to the small municipalities around Jonestown, Guyana, where the Peoples Temple massacre occurred, and interviews with residents about their memories of interactions with the commune and how it and the tragedy affected their lives. The interviews will be mapped to specific locations on Google Earth, creating a peripheral contour of Jonestown, a place that no longer exists and whose remains cannot be seen by satellite. I will be tracking the locations of interviews using a homemade location-mapping device with a GPS-enabled microcontroller.
One goal will be to illustrate the small surrounding towns as living entities that we come to know through the jumping-off point of Jonestown. The mass suicide is often the first and last thing someone from the U.S. thinks of in relation to Guyana, as if the events happened on a deserted island. I am interested in the small, nondescript port, mining and border towns in developing countries, the types of places rarely read about. I lived at a border town in West Africa for two years, and my subsequent work was influenced by meeting people and hearing their stories, my glimpses into their interesting lives.
Rebecca Moore, author of Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple, writes,
Sociologists argue that we can understand new religions such as Peoples Temple, as operating in a dynamic relationship with the world outside the group. To consider internal factors apart from external factors does not tell the whole story of a new religion. The interaction between members and outsiders helps to determine group attitudes and behavior, just as the interaction between members and their leader shapes beliefs and actions.
We know that Peoples Temple members sold their crafts at local markets, competed in basketball tournaments in Georgetown, and were closely-aligned with certain Guyanese political figures. The only stories we hear, however, are from survivors, ex-members and those who interacted with the community from the U.S., never the accounts of those most geographically close.
I will arrive in Georgetown, the capitol, in early June, then take a plane from Georgetown to Port Kaituma, which is three miles from Jonestown. From there I will visit surrounding towns such as Matthews Ridge and Arakaka, as well as Jonestown, itself. I will spend two weeks in the towns, getting to know people and gathering interviews. I have made contacts with locals, a man in Georgetown who has recently given me the contact information for a Port Kaituma resident who had interactions with Jim Jones, an aid worker from the U.S., as well as managers of a guest house in Port Kaituma. Interviews will be video and/or audio recordings with accompanying photos. Photographic documentation will include views of peripheral towns as well as remnants of Jonestown. The precise geographic location of each interview will be noted by the GPS device and added to Google Earth via Placemarked links using the KML file format.
