The plane crashed to the ground after gliding over the trees. The mother’s body was left inside the device, along with the pilot and a family friend. All three had died from the impact. It was at that moment that 13-year-old Lesly suddenly realized that she and her three little brothers had survived a plane crash in the middle of the Colombian jungle. From that moment on, alone, without anyone’s help, she had a single purpose: to keep them alive in such an inhospitable and dangerous place. When they were all rescued, 40 days later, malnourished and frightened, the children wanted to play and read.
The four brothers lived with their parents in Araracuara, a town in the heart of the Amazon jungle where a Colombian president ordered the construction of a prison in the 1930s to lock up the most dangerous criminals. Lock up is a figure of speech. In reality, the prisoners lived outdoors, in the middle of a swampy and overgrown terrain. Whoever wanted to escape and enter the jungle signed his death sentence. The following generations that were born there, many descendants of convicts, learned to live among snakes, jaguars and poisonous plants.
Lesly, as a daughter of that environment, knows the secrets of the jungle. She knows how to guide herself by the rays of the sun that filter through the trees, recognize passable paths, broken branches, and edible mushrooms, according to an uncle of the minor. An urbanite would hardly survive in that area, but the people of the indigenous communities find their way easily and can travel 30 kilometers in a day without adventure shoes. Lesly had grown up with those teachings. In the long run they were going to save her life and her brothers’ lives.
But he still had to get on that plane, the Cessna 206, registration HK 2803, flown by a man who had previously been a taxi driver, Hernán Murcia. It was May 1st. Her mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, and her four children were going to meet her father, Manuel Ranoque. He, who was governor of the nearest indigenous reservation, had fled from Araracuara after being threatened by the guerrillas. He hoped to start a new life with his entire family in Bogotá, the country’s capital.
The flight left from his town and was supposed to arrive in San José del Guaviare, the nearest departmental capital. The journey involves going through a good part of the jungle. Halfway over the Apaporis River, the pilot reported an engine failure. It was the last communication he had with the control tower. After that he started to lose height. Due to the path that the ship made, it is believed that the pilot tried to land in the river, but he did not have time and tried to land on the trees. The blow was just as abrupt and the plane ended up falling to the ground.
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For some reason that so far no one has been able to explain, the three adults died from the impact, but the four children survived with hardly any injuries. The authorities who saw that flight go missing assumed that there were no survivors. It was not until 16 days later that some indigenous people found the plane with the three bodies inside. Where were the minors? They appeared a bottle, a bitten apple, a hair band and some diapers that implied that they were alive. But where?
Lesly, Soleiny (nine), Tien Noriel (four) and Cristin Neriman (11 months) began a journey in the jungle that was going to last beyond imagination. Lesly led them at all times and took care to keep them safe and sound. They are known to have fed from what they could and, later, from kits that rescuers dropped from the sky. More than 100 members of the Colombian special forces and 70 indigenous people were in charge of looking for them as they could while they wandered aimlessly through the largest humid forest on the planet.
On the way they ran into a dog that accompanied them for a long way and kept them very good company. One fine day, the jungle swallowed him and they never heard from him again: his best friend was lost. In there it is always night due to the thick foliage and it is difficult to notice more than one silhouette at 20 meters. If someone strays further than that distance, they can get lost and never appear again. So the children must have stayed close together. Lesly, according to a military source, is the one carrying the baby most of the day.
They couldn’t know it, but finding them was a matter of honor for the president of the country. Days after the appearance of the plane, Gustavo Petro tweeted that they had appeared alive. The news went viral in minutes. With the passing of the hours, however, the military did not finish confirming it. It was later learned that an official had been carried away by rumors in an indigenous community and assumed that they had been found. Petro had to delete the message, quite an affront for an accomplished tweeter like him. He made a bad impression in front of everyone and ordered the Military Forces to do everything possible to find them. It was a matter of national priority.
At that point, the children had already been missing for almost 20 days. The commander in charge of the search, Pedro Sánchez, said that if they were not indigenous the chances of finding them alive would be very low. He kept the faith for Lesly. The trackers walked hundreds of kilometers, weaving a spider web on the map with their steps. However, they did not finish finding the children. Time was running out.
The search was so long that the country forgot about them. The government became entangled in a scandal of illegal wiretapping and rumors of irregular financing, and almost everyone lost interest. Commander Sánchez didn’t care about all that, he always picked up the phone with the same impetus: “Until we find them, we’re not going to leave.” His theory was that if they were dead they would have found their bodies by now. They couldn’t find them, he claimed, because they were moving targets. White birthdays: the baby turned one and the four-year-old turned five. We still don’t know if they were aware and if they came to celebrate them. The days and nights in the jungle are a uniform mass, the leaves of the calendar and the hands of the clock no longer matter.
The military received the support of the indigenous communities. Without them, it would have been impossible. The natives prayed before entering the jungle as a way of asking mother nature for permission. They have a series of beliefs and rites that are difficult for the white man to understand. For them, the jungle is a living entity with rationality and will. The children’s grandmother said that it was nature that did not let them go outside. The spiritual matter is very strong. They also have the theory that the nomadic tribes of that area applied their ancestral forces so that the authorities would not find them and stay to live with them.
That was one of the president’s fears, that one of those communities that survive practically isolated would have found them and made them their children. You had to think anything except that they were dead. And the reality is that they were not. A military and indigenous command found them after 40 days with symptoms of malnutrition and tired, but their lives were not in danger. Lesly got it. Colombia elevates it these days to the rank of myth.
The military took the minors out of the jungle in a helicopter and has taken them to a hospital in Bogotá where they will remain for two or three weeks. There they get bored in their rooms and the boy, Tien Noriel, wants to remove the cables and go for a walk, according to the official Astrid Cáceres, director of the minor’s institute. She was told that after this 40-day odyssey they just want to play and read. They are children.
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