Authorities have disclosed the terrible first words each of the four Colombian miracle children whispered when relief arrived for them following a 40-day struggle in the merciless Amazon rainforest. Tien Noriel Ranoque Mucutuy, four, remarked to the search party after being found: “My mother is dead.” Meanwhile, the eldest of the siblings, 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, who is responsible for keeping her siblings alive, remarked, “I’m hungry.” Lesly informed her family from the hospital where she is being treated that her mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, survived the plane disaster. She fought for four days to survive before telling her children to leave her alone and requesting Lesly to look after her younger siblings.
According to police, the four children used their Indigenous ancestry and knowledge of the jungle to devise a survival plan
According to grandfather Narciso Mucutuy, it was Lesly that pulled the youngest child, Cristin, from the plane after the crash and managed to protect her throughout the campaign. “She saw the feet of her littlest sister where the three dead were and she pulled her out,” said Mucutuy. A Cessna 206 flying seven people from Araracuara in Amazonas province to San Jose del Guaviare in Guaviare province issued a distress call in the early hours of May 1 due to engine failure. While three adults died, including the pilot and mother, the youngsters were left to their own devices. Their disappearance prompted a large military-led search, with over a hundred Colombian special forces men and 70 indigenous scouts scouring the deep forest. According to police, the four children used their Indigenous ancestry and knowledge of the jungle to devise a survival plan.
“Days after the crash, they ate the farina which they had carried there… but they (eventually) ran out of food and decided to look for a place where they could stay alive. They were malnourished but fully conscious and lucid when we found them,” said Pedro Arnulfo Sanchez Suarez, spokesperson of Colombian military special forces.
“Their indigenous origins allowed them to acquire a certain immunity against diseases in the jungle and having knowledge of the jungle itself – knowing what to eat and what not to eat – as well as finding water kept them alive – which would not have been possible (if they) were not used to that type of hostile environment,” he added.
