The jungle of southeastern Colombia seems no place for young children. The jungle vegetation here is so dense that visibility is less than twenty meters, while it rains for up to sixteen hours a day. Fugitive FARC guerrillas, poisonous snakes, biting insects and predators such as the jaguar and tiger cat live there. And yet three brothers and a sister – aged 11 months and 4, 9 and 13 years old – managed to survive here for a month after a plane crash.
At least that is the hope of the members of the rescue mission that the Colombian army has set up in the remote area. This Operación Esperanza (Operation Hope) is followed closely in the South American country – and far beyond -, with new plot twists almost daily.
The story begins early in the morning of May 1 as a single-engine Cessna 206 takes off from a runway deep in the jungle and heads for the town of San José de Guaviare. In addition to the pilot, there are six passengers on board: an indigenous leader and a mother with her four children. The plane still has about 175 kilometers to cover when the pilot raises the alarm with air traffic control via the radio a little after half past eight. His (only) engine has broken down.
On May 16, the plane is found – with three dead adults on board, but without the children. There is an open suitcase nearby. It is suspected that Jacobo, Solecni, Tien Noriel and Cristian Neriman entered the jungle on foot.
Kites and whistles
The army begins a search. On the ground, where more than a hundred soldiers comb the area together with dozens of local indigenous people and leave survival kits with food, drinks and whistles at strategic points. And from the air, where helicopters and planes with thermal cameras, among other things, try to see through the thick canopy.
The soldiers also launched kites and set off flares. Speakers played an audio message from the children’s grandmother, spoken in their native language. And kilometers of plastic police tape have been stretched in the hope that the children will stay in the demarcated area.
After a series of finds, authorities believe there may still be children alive. Among other things, two diapers were found (one clean and one dirty), scissors, a plastic spout bottle and the print of a small foot: the eldest son is used to walking barefoot through the forest. The children are of indigenous origin and used to jungle life, which significantly increases their chances of survival in the inhospitable area.
Recently, however, the forest is said to have become dangerous for the family. Father Manuel Ranoque administers Puerto Sábalo – Los Monos, a remote protected area assigned to the indigenous Huitoto people. In that role he would have recently been threatened by wandering guerrillas. Less than three kilometers from the crash site, an abandoned camp was found belonging to a branch of the FARC, which did not want to demobilize.
Earlier this year, Governor Ranoque fled his community in response to threats from outsiders. At the end of April, he contacted his wife Magdalena Mucutuy from the town of Villavicencio that she and the children should also come quickly. Once reunited, they would build a new life in the capital Bogotá.
Intruders
Throughout the Amazon region, which covers ten countries in South America, the native population is under pressure from invaders. Their habitat was first colonized by rubber tappers, missionaries and soldiers; now illegal prospectors, lumberjacks, fishermen and drug criminals roam the forest.
Also read this report: Indigenous people protect their own land in the Brazilian Amazon
In Caquetá, the vast department where the plane crashed, there are also peoples who want little or no contact with the outside world. One of the theories about the children’s fate is therefore that they were found by such an indigenous group, who took them deeper into the forest. That would complicate the search, because the government is not allowed by law to make contact with such isolated indigenous people.
However, the army considers a kidnapping, by indigenous people or by the guerrilla, unlikely and hopes to find the children alive, army commander Pedro Sánchez told the press on Thursday. “If they were already dead, they would be easier to find because then they would be in one place and the sniffer dogs could pick up their scent more easily.”
Just this week, fresh footprints were found about three kilometers from the plane, from which the military read that the children would have changed course. According to Sánchez, his investigators must have passed the children several times “up to a hundred meters.”
As the captain of Operation Hope, he continues to tell the Colombians that the mission will live up to its name. “We have a 100 percent expectation to find them alive.” Gustavo Petro, the left-wing president of Colombia, also assures his people almost daily that the search for the children remains the top priority.
The question remains whether this optimism is justified. The fact that, for example, we were able to find a teat of a drinking bottle, but not the children themselves, shows how difficult this search is, Sánchez said on Thursday. “We are not looking for a needle in a haystack, but a tiny flea on a huge rug that also moves in unpredictable directions.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on June 3, 2023.
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