Captain Gerry Gouveia has a particular reason to remember the tragedy that was Jonestown, 38 years ago. As a Guyana Defence Force pilot he had been part of the army detail assigned to the stomach-churning operation that had followed the deaths of more than 900 followers of an American man named Jim Jones, who had chosen a remote corner of Guyana to cause an entirely unwanted spotlight to be focused on this country. But when you ask him about the impact that Jonestown has had on Guyana almost four decades after the incident, he evades the question somewhat. “We do not always choose the history that we make. We must simply live with that history,” he says.
His memory of Jonestown is linked to his own connection with the terse command he had to carry out to fly troops to Pork Kaituma and land them there. “Something terrible had happened at Jonestown but for some time I had no clue what it was. I only knew that we had to be wary of the place,” he said.
