BOGOTÁ — The four indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Colombian Amazon jungle are recovering this Sunday at a military hospital in Bogotá, as new details of their harrowing story slowly emerge in a country that remained stunned by their survival.
The children aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months are expected to spend at least two weeks in the hospital receiving treatment after their rescue on Friday, although some are already talking and want to go for a walk, according to relatives.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital that according to what Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, the eldest of the infants, told him, their mother remained alive for four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
Ranoque said that the mother would have told him: “go away”, in an apparent allusion to leaving the scene of the accident in order to survive. He did not offer further details.
The small Cesna C206 plane, which was on the route from Araracuara to San José del Guavaire, crashed in the jungle area, after the pilot reported an engine failure. The three adults, the pilot, the children’s mother and one other occupant, died. Then the search for the survivors began, which had a happy ending on Friday with the rescue of the four little brothers.
The day before, General Carlos Rincón, a doctor at the hospital, pointed out that the health situation of the minors is “stable”, while Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said that the infants were being hydrated.
Fidencio Valencia, the children’s uncle, assured the Colombian outlet Noticias Caracol on Sunday that the minors are beginning to speak and that one of them mentioned that while they were in the jungle they hid in the trunks of trees to protect themselves. He said that they were exhausted and with their clothes torn.
Dairo Juvenal Mucutuy, another uncle, also told Noticias Caracol that one of the children told him that he wanted to start walking even though he admitted that his feet hurt. “The only thing I said to the boy (was) ‘when you recover, we are going to play soccer,'” he added.
Authorities and relatives pointed out on Saturday that the children survived eating cassava flour and seeds, and that a certain familiarity with the fruits of the jungle was also key to resisting in that area of the Colombian Amazon that has snakes, mosquitoes and other animals. The children are members of the Huitoto indigenous group.
After being rescued on Friday, the children were transported by helicopter to Bogotá and then to the military hospital, where relatives, President Gustavo Petro, as well as government and military officials, met with them on Saturday.
FATHER ASSURES THAT HE IS THREATENED
Manuel Ranoque, father of the four children who were lost for 40 days in the Amazon jungle after surviving a plane crash and were rescued on Friday, assured this Sunday that he is threatened by the Carolina Ramírez Front of the FARC dissidents.
“I am going to live full time in Bogotá because I have problems and difficulties with the Carolina Ramírez Front that is looking for me,” the man told reporters in front of the Central Military Hospital in Bogotá, where his children are recovering.
Ranoque, an indigenous Muinane from the community of Puerto Sábalo-Los Monos, in the southern department of Caquetá, assured that he was threatened for “economic interest” and that the dissidents began to pressure them by threatening their children.
The father of the minors, who did not provide further details, stated that he is “a target” for the Carolina Ramírez Front because he knows all that area of the Colombian Amazon, one of the reasons why he sought to get his wife, Magdalena, out of there. Mucutuy, who died in the plane crash that occurred on May 1.
For this reason, he asked for “decent housing”, as well as guaranteeing the education of his children and the safety of his entire family.
In the region where Ranoque and his family lived, the Carolina Ramírez Front, which belongs to the Central General Staff (EMC), the largest dissident of the FARC, and the Bolivarian Commandos of the Second Marquetalia Border, another dissident, operate.
“A MIRACLE OF GOD”
The minors were found on Friday in a remote point between the departments of Caquetá and Guaviare, where they were searched tirelessly for weeks by some 200 soldiers, including commandos of the Army Special Forces, and indigenous people from the area, all integrated into the “Operation Hope”.
A Colombian Air Force (FAC) helicopter took the minors out of the jungle on Friday night and took them to San José del Guaviare, capital of the department of Guaviare, where a C-295 plane configured as an ambulance picked them up and delivered them. transported to the capital.
The rescued are the 13-year-old girl Lesly Mukutuy, who was in charge of taking care of her brothers Soleiny Mukutuy, 9, for 40 days; She has Noriel Ronoque Mukutuy, five years old, and Cristin Neruman Ranoque, a one-year-old baby.
All this after the accident that occurred on May 1 when a Cessna 206 plane operated by the Avianline Charter’s company in which the four children were traveling along with their mother, an indigenous leader and the pilot, crashed in the Colombian Amazon jungle. In this event the three adults died.
“It must be said, first, that this is a miracle from God and, as the indigenous people believe (…) we, as the indigenous people, are capable of searching, showing the world that we found the plane, that we found the children “, Ranoque said.
The man, who did not give many details of the search and who confessed that his children have not told him much about how they survived, hopes that they “recover well and will give their statements themselves.”
“She (Lesly, the eldest daughter) the only thing that makes it clear to me is that her mother was alive for four days. Before she died, her mother told them, perhaps, go away,” she said.
