Indigenous people and the Colombian military unite in the search for children who disappeared in the jungle

Indigenous and Military Forces walking together in the jungle. A rare union with a humanitarian purpose: to find the four Huitoto indigenous children who have disappeared since May 1, when the plane they were traveling in —a poorly repaired Cessna 206 HK-2803— crashed in the porous Amazon jungle, in southern Colombia.

The flight, which covered the route between Araracuara and San José del Guaviare, never reached its destination. The pilot of the aircraft, the children’s mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, and the community leader, Hernando Murcia Morales, who was accompanying the family, died in the accident.

“This minga that we are doing is very important because it is about the lives of our children. It is about the conversation with our mother earth,” Giovani Yule, director of the Land Restitution Unit, told France 24. He is in charge of coordinate the members of various indigenous peoples: Sionas, Nasa, Misak, Nukak, Muruy, Huitotos… who have arrived from the departments of Putumayo and Caquetá to the current base of search operations in Calamar, a small town in the department of Guaviare .

They share the hope of bringing hopeful news to the country. “Asking Mother Nature, she helps us,” Jarvy Gómez, one of the Huitoto indigenous people who found the ship among the trees almost ten days ago, told France 24. His uncle died in the accident.

More than 20 days missing in the jungle

23 days have passed and Lesly Mucutuy, 13, Soleiny Mucutuy, nine, Tien Noriel Ranoque Mucutuy, four, and their 11-month-old baby, Cristin Neryman Ranoque Mucutuy, could continue wandering through a virgin and dangerous jungle. . The weather conditions are also risky.

“(Mother Nature) is waiting for us because we have a connection with her; from tradition we always ask her permission,” Romario, a Murui indigenous guard from the Liriri reservation, in Putumayo, told EFE.

The indigenous people involved in the search rely on their ancestral knowledge of the territory to locate them: “When we enter with the guidance of the elders, of our spirits, we are not afraid. They welcome us with joy, they welcome us well,” said Yule before getting on the Colombian Army helicopter and continuing with the rescue efforts.

The methods are many: messages recorded by the children’s grandmother and broadcast on powerful loudspeakers, launching flares and kits of survival, military aircraft that track with a temperature sensor… From the ground and in the air, all attention is focused on finding the whereabouts of minors.

SAccording to the Military Forces, the children continue to move through the jungle, moving away from the place of the accident. “We continue with the faith intact. I don’t know when this operation will end,” he told the local media.The Colombian‘ General Pedro Sánchez, in command of the operation, which includes some 150 soldiers from the Special Forces.

“Looking for them until you find them” is the motto of the ongoing ‘Operation Hope’, as the government of the leftist president, Gustavo Petro, called it. Despite the minimal advances, they do not want to throw in the towel and trust in the union of knowledge: the Army’s tactics and resources —which work with detailed satellite images— and the ancestral wisdom of the 85 indigenous people who joined the search on Sunday to find minors.

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“Seek Them Until You Find Them”

“We have managed to reach an articulation process in which the indigenous communities, especially those that have the experience, that come from the jungle towns and also have search capacity, will work hand in hand with the institutions and the Force Pública”, said Sánchez, who also told local media that his team faces the harsh conditions of the jungle. “The possibility of injury is high,” he noted.

The director of the Victims Unit, Patricia Tobón Yagarí, and the director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, Astrid Cácerres, have also traveled to the area. “Operation Hope is giving us lights and what we are doing here is bringing our information. Our duty is not to dismiss any information and we are going to keep looking,” Cáceres pointed out.

The institution led by Cáceres was criticized after, through a tweet, President Petro announced the finding of minors alive. A chain of erroneous messages led him to delete the message on the social network and apologize for the confusion generated. All of Colombia is looking for the media miracle: finding the four children alive.

So far, the only thing that the members of the rescue teams have found were a bottle, scissors, bitten fruit, some footprints that would be those of the minors and a small improvised shelter with branches and leaves from the trees. This made the rescuers think that the minors are still alive and that they are scared, so they would continue walking “disoriented” through the thick jungle, as the main hypothesis of the Armed Forces suggests.

“We feel a great impotence,” declared General Sánchez

“We found the plane, but not the four minors, where are they? Why don’t they cry? Why don’t they yell in the middle of the jungle? We feel very helpless,” said General Sánchez, in an interview with the local radio ‘W Radio’.

It is believed that isolated indigenous communities could live in the area of ​​the accident: “It is a territory where there are uncontacted indigenous peoples. It is the Chiribiquete conservation zone, which is a jungle that continues to be a virgin forest,” Tobón said. For this reason, they do not rule out the possibility that the minors are under the protection of one of the indigenous communities that inhabit that territory.

However, the area where the ship crashed is also close to controlled positions or with the presence of FARC dissidents. The military found last Saturday an old abandoned guerrilla camp, less than three kilometers from the wreckage of the crashed plane. “We remain fully alert, but with the intelligence mechanisms we monitor what may be happening,” said Sánchez, noting that the chances that the guerrillas have the children in their possession are “zero.”

But it would not be the first time that these groups recruit minors from indigenous communities. That same area of ​​the plane crash was bombed at the end of the mandate of former Colombian President Iván Duque, in an attempt to capture the leader of the Central General Staff of the dissidents, alias Iván Mordisco, who was then presumed dead.

In fact, last Monday, the Petro Executive suspended the truce with the main command of the FARC dissidents, after the murder of four indigenous children forcibly recruited by the guerrillas. “It is reported that the bilateral cessation that currently existed with this armed group in the departments of Meta, Caquetá, Guaviare and Putumayo is suspended and all offensive operations are reactivated,” the president wrote in a statement on Twitter.

Isolation, insecurity and abandonment of Amazonian communities

After the news of the accident was released, the indigenous organization OPIAC denounced the precarious conditions of the airstrips, which force unsafe trips when the indigenous people want to leave their communities in the jungle to other regions of the country. “The Colombian State is responsible for this tragedy and all similar ones,” they expressed in a statement, in which they warned that this type of tragedy is an “absolute negligence” of the controls and procedures for air safety in the area.

In addition, the damaged plane – built in 1982 – had been repaired without passing the controls and it was not the first time it had suffered an accident. “It is true that the plane crashed in the jungle, but nothing happened,” told ” Giselle López, owner of Avianline Charter SAS, the operating company.

With local media and EFE