More details have emerged about the survival of four children whose plane crashed in the Amazon, including the final message from their mother.
On May 1, a plane crash in Columbia left rescuers searching for 40 days to locate survivors. Now, after the children aboard the craft have been brought to safety, the eldest daughter of crash victim Magdalena Mucutuy confirmed the woman’s final message to her kids.
“My daughter has told me that their mother was alive for four days,” Mucutuy’s husband Manual Ranoque told the Guardian.
“Before she died,” he recounted, “she said to them: ‘Maybe you should go. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he’s going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you.'”
As previously reported, the children — Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 13; Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9; Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, 4; and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy — had survived while their mother, the pilot and one other had been discovered deceased at the crash site.
‘Truly a miracle’: Four young children found alive in remote jungle 40 days after plane crash https://t.co/UKflJcw59w via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) June 11, 2023
Speaking with the Daily Mail, Ranoque, who had participated in the rescue efforts, expressed, “I was so excited the moment I saw my children.”
However, while speaking with reporters about the kids, to which he was father to the younger two and step father to the older two, he lamented the fact that the government was allegedly keeping him from seeing his non-blood relatives.
“You have got to understand I can’t speak about the situation inside the hospital because it’s very sensitive…but I can say they are doing way better,” he explained.
“I have only been able to see my two little kids, because the government will not allow me to see my other two daughters,” Ranoque continued. “I don’t know why I can’t see them.”
“I am the father, I went to look for them, I searched for them and now that I brought them back, now I cannot see them. How is that possible? And the other search teams, the other people, can see them,” the father went on. “They are allowed to see them, to take pictures with them. And us, my colleagues that have come from suffering, they haven’t been given any medical attention. I fought 40 days on my knees in the jungle.”
As for how the children, members of the Huitoto Indigenous community, survived, their aunt had explained the eldest had played a “survival game” and knew which fruits were safe to eat and which were dangerous.
“When we played, we set up like little camps. [Lesly] knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest,” the aunt had said. “And she knew how to take care of a baby.”
“She gave them flour and cassava bread,” the grandmother, Fatima Valencia, had added, “any fruit in the bush. They know what they must consume.”
Meanwhile, the future of the older children remained in question as the Mail reported, “the Columbian authorities want to have influence over the future upbringing…Ranoque, who fled his area after being threatened by FARC guerrillas, said the two older children were being brainwashed by the group into believing that he was abusing them.”
“I am not their biological father,” Ranoque told the press, “but they were trying to tell them I was abusing them. Lesly shut their mouths, saying I am their father.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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