2023-05-18 20:58:30
Absolute desolation. Colombia is currently experiencing anguish, sadness and, above all, surprise after its president has acknowledged that he was “wrong” when breaking the news that the three minors and the baby disappeared in the Amazon jungle after an accident plane had been found unharmed. Gustavo Petro released a statement this afternoon in which he stated that “the military forces and the indigenous communities will continue their tireless search to give the country the news it is waiting for. At this time there is no other priority other than moving forward with the search until you find them. Children’s lives are the most important thing.”
The fiasco of the “miracle” of the children lost in the jungle announced by the president has already unleashed some critical reactions against Petro’s haste, who launched a jubilant message on social networks immediately after being informed by an indigenous social institute, but without the confirmation of the army and the rescue services, which continued the search. The family of the minors and the woman who died in the accident have issued a statement in which they “reject the misinformation and media management that has been given to the search, discovery and traces of our relatives.” “Physical and emotional health is not a game that can be erased and/or easily forgotten” as a consequence of “the false expectations that have spread” since the presidential announcement, he concludes.
The sequence that has led to the biggest social slip-up of Petro since his arrival in the Government, and one of the biggest slip-ups of the Administration at the international level if one takes into account the enormous expectation generated by the false rescue, is summarized in four dates. The plane in which Magdalena Mucutuy, 33, and her four children (Lesly, 13; Soleiny, 9; Tien Noriel, 4, and Cristin Neriman, only eleven months old) were traveling, crashed in the Caquetá region on May 1 while flying over the route between Araracuara and San José del Guaviare.
On Monday, the 15th, the military were able to reach the scene of the incident after making their way painfully through the jungle, hit by heavy downpours. They discovered three bodies, those of the woman, the pilot and the co-pilot. Of the little ones, not a trace. They resumed their search.
On Wednesday, the 17th, two captains from Avianline Charter’s, the company to which the crashed aircraft belonged, allegedly received a message from a native community informing that the minors had been located by two indigenous people in the thicket. His intention, according to these sources, was to go down the Apaporis River and transfer them to Puerto Cachiporro, a town located in a lush area of the Sierra de Chiribiquete National Park, five hundred kilometers from Bogotá. Apparently, according to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, the children had to arrive in this community at five in the afternoon this Thursday (midnight in Spain). Someone from the center must have communicated the rumor to Petro, who at 4:43 p.m. on Wednesday spread it on social networks. Twenty-four hours later, his denial has arrived, once the original message was deleted from the internet.
This is the closest version of the sequence of events that has been offered, although right now no one puts their hand in fire for its veracity. The company that owns the plane has avoided referring to the hoax and mistrust has settled in a population whose questions are: Where are the three children and the baby? Is the official account of the search absolutely reliable?
“I’m sorry for what happened,” the president wrote in his message, in which he made it clear that the enthusiastically described “operation hope” has become a nightmare. The Colombians had taken up the cause of the children and the uncertainty regarding their survival has turned into frustration and bitterness. Petro reiterates that the tracking continues. He would be tacitly denying the version that two indigenous people had found and taken the minors to a safe place. And he also reveals that the military are still confused about his whereabouts.
A commander of the armed forces has explained that one hundred soldiers comb the jungle in grids. They are forced to divide continually. They must search in different directions in the absence of reliable clues about the direction the children are taking as the hours go by. Once this next night passes, it will be nineteen days since the accident; nineteen days in which three minors and a baby remain lost in the jungle under terrible weather, full of electrical storms, rain and wind. As far as is known, no one of those ages has faced a survival test as extreme as the one these four brothers are going through.
The trail of the coleteros
When they boarded the Cessna at the small Araracuara aerodrome, the intention of Magdalena Mucutuy and her children was to join her husband, Manuel Ranoque, in San José del Guaviare and later go to the Colombian capital, where the family intended to settle. In his day, Manuel had to escape from Araracuara after being threatened by the FARC, which forced him to work in different jobs far from his hometown to raise the money with which to settle with his family hundreds of kilometers from the reach of the guerrilla.
At half past seven in the morning of May 1, the plane was flying over the Caquetá region. It suffered a breakdown and plunged into the middle of the jungle, almost 200 kilometers from its destination. The device got stuck in the treetops and then fell vertically to the ground. Both the mother and the pilot and co-pilot died on impact. The first of them, Hernando Murcia Morales, was able to give the alert that there had been an engine failure before crashing. The third fatality is Herman Mendoza Hernández, director of the Yetara indigenous foundation. His corpses have been found by the military, but they have not yet been able to be moved from the place. A helicopter has arrived this Thursday with a medical and judicial team to complete the forensic report before the removal of the bodies.
Photomontage of the crashed plane and, next to it, a baby’s bottle.
EFE
From the moment the pilot reported the failure and communication with the plane was interrupted, the authorities began the rescue operation. It took two weeks for the military and civil aviation services to locate the exact point of the fall and to reach it through the jungle.
Of the children, several indications would have been found, as can be seen from the information provided by the armed forces and the images that have been posted on Twitter. A teapot, bitten fruit, hair bands and beds of branches where it is presumed that the four brothers have managed to take refuge at night.
The discovery of all these indications points to an extreme episode of survival, although with an uncertain end. This Thursday it was unknown if the young victims have survived. The rescuers believe that the two older sisters have taken care of the little ones and have improvised shelters with branches and leaves all these days. The discovery of fruit remains indicates that they have also collected food, always according to the official version. Apparently, the family belongs to an indigenous community dedicated to agriculture, so the brothers would be well acquainted with the wild crops of that area of Colombia.
The soldiers claim to have also found clothing, a feeding bottle, hair scrunchies and even children’s scissors. The accessories that nourish hope. As explained by an army command, it is likely that the victims have been leaving some of these belongings on purpose to create a possible trail for rescuers to follow. «The objects reconfirm to us the situation that they are still alive. We continue our efforts and we hope that we are heading in the right direction,” said Colonel Juan José López, Director of Civil Aeronautics Operations. The main difficulty, as he has added, lies in the breadth of the area to be covered, the intensity of the storms that muddy the land and the impossibility of knowing if the kids have made a turn in their path.
Two scrunchies and the remains of a garment that the disappeared placed on some leaves, possibly to leave a trail for the rescuers.
Twitter
When it is about to be three weeks since the accident, the urgency of the device is reflected in the deployment of technical means that accompanies the soldiers and the indigenous people. As good connoisseurs of the jungle, several native communities have joined the device. A plane flew over the thicket this morning firing flares in order to guide the rescuers, but also the lost children in case they could see them. The military have also deployed sound systems and light bonfires, while other aircraft broadcast through powerful loudspeakers messages recorded by the children’s grandmother asking them to “do not move” in the middle of the jungle, since in this way they make it difficult The tracking. The lack of response to all these stimuli, however, weakens the illusions of the rescuers.
This woman, named Fátima and whose daughter died in the accident, has shown her discomfort and “anguish” at the little contact of the authorities with the family. Another relative, Fidencio Valencia, has indicated in the digital ‘Semana’ that “until I have a photo where I can see the four children alive, I cannot get out of the doubt.” Uncle of Magdalena Mucutuy, recalled that “she was a hard-working woman, dedicated to agriculture. She didn’t eat because she was working. And she was like a daughter to me », which is why her relationship with her children « is very close ».
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