Operation Hope: The key alliance between military and indigenous people to find four brothers lost in the jungle

The search is over. "The indigenous communities and the military forces, together, found the children 40 days later," was how President Gustavo Petro celebrated that the four little ones – 13, 9, 4 years old, and an 11-month-old baby – who survived a plane crash and walked lost for more than a month, have been found in the Colombian jungle. A victory that seemed impossible when you consider the difficulty of surviving in a humid terrain where those who survive well are jaguars, snakes or poisonous plants. 'Operation Hope' was called the government's mission to find them.

Cooperation between law enforcement and indigenous groups from the Siona and Araracuara areas in the Amazon rainforest was key to finding them, the president said. "The articulation between military force and indigenous people, obviously they know the jungle much more than we do, was completely effective, and an example of what this type of alliance can be for the country," Petro added. Pedro Sánchez, commander of the special forces, recently explained that 184 people in total in total were "combing" the jungle every day, 112 from the public force and 72 indigenous people.

General Pedro Sánchez receives indigenous people to search for the four children. Fernando Vergara (AP)

"They understand the forest better, they know how to interpret the footprints very well. One of them found the plane," Sánchez told EL PAÍS about his indigenous teammates. At that moment they found the bodies of three adults, including the children's mother, and realized that the four children could still be alive. The Public Force, for its part, contributed to indigenous knowledge with technology and different strategies: they hung whistles on construction tapes so that children could make noises with them if they found them; they lit up the sky with headlights to get his attention; They put speakers with the voice of the grandmother, in the Uitoto language, in which she asked the children to stay still to find them. "From the air, with two blackhawks and nine more aircraft, we have launched 10,000 flyers in indigenous language and meal kits," Sánchez said. Among the searchers was also a dog, named Wilson, who helped find clues to the children in the search process but got lost along the way and has yet to be found.

"Thanks to the creator father, the indigenous brothers, the military forces and the organizations that supported the search," OPIAC or Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon published on its social networks. "The survival of children is a sample of knowledge and relationship with the natural environment of life, which is taught from the mother's womb," they added.

The footprint of a small foot, a teapot and little else were the signs that the search teams found and that allowed them to maintain hope. There were times when they thought they had been only 200 or 300 meters from the little ones, but among the dense jungle they had not noticed them. The Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, said that they realized that the food they threw from the air was consumed, and the indigenous groups said that, by the signs of this consumption, it should be the children eating and not animals that found them. "That guided us in a direction, almost that the minors already gave a circle," said the minister regarding the route of the children.

Some of the clues found during the search for the four missing children in Guaviare, Colombia.

The children will now be cared for by health authorities, President Petro has said. On May Day, the day the four survived a plane crash, their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, died. Since that day, their father, Manuel Ranoque, governor of the indigenous reservation of Puerto Sábalo, who had left his land before them due to threats to his life by an armed group, has also searched for them in the jungle. The family hoped to reunite and relocate to a city, a place away from the bullets. An accident cut short that dream. After 40 days of uncertainty, Manuel Ranoque will be reunited with his children.

Subscribe here to the newsletter of EL PAÍS about Colombia and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of the country.