The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Jones accepted and even welcomed visits by Guyanese officials, seeing these as opportunities to demonstrate how everyone in Jonestown was fine, and how much progress the settlers were making in establishing their self-sustaining agricultural mission in the jungle. Each of these visits was painstakingly stage-managed. The Guyanese were led to specific buildings and fields, where, apparently by coincidence, they would encounter settlers placed there in advance who would parrot memorized praise of their lives there and their leader. Then the government visitors would be invited to join the colonists in what they were told was a typically abundant Jonestown meal that included lots of meat and tasty desserts. All the settlers looked forward to these occasional feasts, which were their only opportunities to eat hearty portions of something other than rice and thin gravy.