Global Courant
The older sister, 13 years old, took care of the younger ones. They wandered for 40 days through the Amazon jungle eating fruits and leaves.
Thanks to her “warrior” nature, 13-year-old Lesly managed to keep her younger siblings safe for 40 days in the jungle. The grandmother of the four indigenous boys who were found alive this Friday after surviving a plane crash and were left stranded in the Colombian Amazon is convinced of this.
“She always took care of them when their mother worked. She gave them fariñita, casabito (flour and cassava bread), any fruit in the bush,” Fátima Valencia, the mother of Magdalena Mucutuy, told AFP, who died when the plane hit the who was traveling with her children collapsed on May 1.
Indigenous women “are very warlike,” emphasizes Valencia, while waiting in a hotel in the city of Villavicencio (downtown) for the moment to see her grandchildren.
The boys were located on Friday afternoon in the middle of the jungle and transported by helicopter to San José del Guaviare, the nearest municipality. Around midnight, an ambulance plane from the Air Force was taking them to Bogotá.
“I just want to see them, touch them,” adds Fidencio Valencia, the children’s grandfather, also in Villavicencio.
Like little Lesly, her brothers Soleiny (9) and Tien Noriel (4) “are very boars (skillful) to walk” through the jungle, the 47-year-old Huitoto indigenous man had told AFP in another interview.
A member of the indigenous community who helped the military in the search for the boys, this Friday after the rescue. Photo: REUTERS
Little Cristin also survived, who turned one year old during the amazing journey of the minors through the forest.
How was the search?
Using sniffer dogs, helicopters, and aircraft, a hundred soldiers and dozens of indigenous people found the bodies of the three adults who were traveling in the aircraft. The children, on the other hand, were not located.
From then on, a spectacular search operation was launched by heaven and earth in which they found clues that at least one of them was still alive: scissors, a bottle, bitten fruit, improvised shelters with leaves. Indications that the children could be wandering among the dense vegetation where jaguars, pumas and poisonous snakes live.
“We don’t let our guard down with our grandfather, with my brother, we pray every night,” says Fátima. They entrusted the fate of the minors to the “spirits of tobacco and mambe”, a coca leaf-based preparation used by native peoples in their rituals.
Two of the rescued indigenous boys, during their transfer in a military plane to Bogotá, on Friday night. Photo: EFE
Faithful to the beliefs of the Huitoto people, they suspected that some supernatural force was preventing the rescue.
After the discovery, the grandparents thanked the hundreds of military and indigenous people who worked shoulder to shoulder in the search. “Also to mother earth who released them,” Fatima added.
Initially, the so-called “Operation Hope” followed the trail of the children in an area of about 323 square kilometers, equivalent to the entire province of Buenos Aires. Last week the Army managed to reduce the area to 20 square kilometers, but heavy rains that last up to 16 hours a day made the task difficult.
barefoot and very skinny
The country was deluded on May 17 with the supposed rescue of the children, when President Gustavo Petro announced it falsely. The next day he retracted it and claimed that he had been misinformed.
On this occasion, the president broke the news with images of the minors in the middle of the jungle as proof of the rescue.
“Until I looked at their photos (I said): yes it’s true,” says Fátima, relieved.
In the pictures they look very skinny and have no shoes. A group of doctors awaited his arrival at a military airport in Bogotá this morning to assess his state of health.
However, Fatima and Fidencio asked to be the first to attend to them: “We have to blow on their bodies so that they gain strength and there we hand them over so that the western part can look at them,” said the grandmother.
From now on, she hopes to have “custody” of the minors, after the death of her mother: “I can give them an education, I still can. That will be my pride. My daughter is watching and she is going to give me spiritual encouragement, strength,” assured.
Fuente: AFP
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