Global Courant
For 40 days, four indigenous children wandered lost through the Colombian Amazon jungle, the sole survivors of a plane crash on May 1. A spectacular search operation, clues and false announcements were part of the chronology that ended this Friday with the discovery of the minors alive.
the plane crash
On the morning of May 1, a Cessna 206 private service plane from Avianline Charters’s company left a jungle area known as Araracuara bound for San José del Guaviare (south), one of the main cities in the Colombian Amazon.
On board were the pilot, an indigenous leader from the Huitoto community, the aboriginal Magdalena Mucutui Valencia and her four children, ages 13, 9 and 4, and a baby who was 11 months old at the time.
Minutes after beginning the journey of about 350 kilometers over the jungle, the captain of the aircraft reported engine problems and the plane disappeared from radar.
According to official information, the minors boarded the aircraft with their mother to flee from the threats of guerrillas who deviated from the peace pact signed by the FARC.
The traces and the search
Between May 15 and 16, soldiers found the pilot dead in the cockpit in the south of the department of Caquetá. The plane was trapped between trees and had the front part destroyed.
The other two adults also died, although the uniformed officers did not specify where their bodies were. There was no news of the children.
A trained dog found a bottle in a remote area of the accident site. More than a hundred soldiers were deployed in the area and they suspected that there was at least one survivor.
Dozens of indigenous people from nearby towns used to moving in the Amazon, a jungle of frequent electrical storms where jaguars, snakes and other wild animals live, joined the search.
In helicopters, the Air Force flew over the jungle, broadcasting messages from the children’s grandmother in their own language on loudspeakers, asking them to stop advancing.
Among the thick vegetation appeared shoes, clothes and freshly bitten fruits.
Some 2.5 kilometers from the site where the plane fell, the military found a camp abandoned by guerrillas.
the false advertisement
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.
Three weeks after the accident, the troops found two diapers and a pair of slippers, and assured that they had passed within 100 meters of the minors. The search was narrowed down to a 20-square-kilometre sector of jungle.
On May 17, the soldiers came across a makeshift camp made of branches and sticks. A dog found some scissors and hair ties.
That same day and hours later, Petro announced that the brothers had been found alive. But the president retracted the following day and regretted the false information.
On May 26, the military organized a symbolic celebration for Cristín, the baby of the group, who that day was one year old and lost in the jungle for almost a month.
Wilson the hero dog
On June 8, when the search for the boys had taken a backseat amid a government crisis sparked by a wiretapping scandal, the military reported that Wilson, a sniffer dog involved in the search, had gone missing in Jungle.
The six-year-old Belgian shepherd was the dog that found Cristín’s bottle in the middle of the vegetation. According to an Army bulletin, it is possible that he was “disoriented” by the “complexity of the terrain.” The military also found the dog’s footprints near those of the minors.
The miracle of finding them
On the afternoon of Friday, June 9, Petro announced that the minors “appeared alive” and released a photo in which they are surrounded by soldiers and indigenous people who participated in the search. They all look very skinny and have no shoes.
“They were alone, they did it themselves,” celebrated the president.
The brothers were found 5 kilometers from the point where the aircraft fell and “stabilized” by combat medics, according to the Defense Ministry.
Around 9:00 p.m., the entity reported that the children were boarding a helicopter to be transferred to San José de Guaviare, the nearest city, and where they will undergo a medical evaluation.
Wilson the dog, however, was not with them and is still missing.
