Lesly, 13, was studying her first year of high school in the indigenous reservation of Los Monos, in the middle of the jungle in the department of Caquetá. The Ronoques lived in a tiny hamlet, Puerto Sábalo, with only 20 families, on the banks of the mighty Caquetá. From the Huitoto ethnic group, his life was turned upside down when his father, a leader in his community, had to leave his land threatened by the new FARC-EP.
He could not take them all with him right away, given the high price of plane tickets, 700,000 each (155 euros). Araracuara, the tiny town in the jungle region where they lived, belonging to the vast municipality of Solano, has a short-runway airport. Only five or seven passenger planes travel, like the one that crashed, and cargo planes. The flights have as their only destination San José del Guaviare, capital of the adjacent department of Guaviare, the city where the crashed device was headed.
When Manuel Ronoque, from the Huitoto, joined Magdalena Mucutuy, from the Muiname ethnic group, she was the mother of two daughters: Lesly and Soleiny. The couple had two more children, Tien Noriel, the only boy, and little Cristin Neriman, who turned one year old while they were missing. For Manuel, he considers the four of them his, without any distinction. He told me when I found him on Thursday in the camp set up, next to the wrecked device, by the dozen indigenous people who had come from his land to help look for his children.
An aunt of the girl, Damarys Mucutuy, related that the two older ones liked a survival game that could have helped save her life. “When we played, we set up like ranchitos and I think she did that,” she explained to Caracol Noticias. “She knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the jungle. And she knew how to take care of a baby.”
Although Manuel Ronoque had nothing to do with coca or illegal gold mining, they are the two main sources of income for the Araracuara inspection, which promotes the guerrillas. According to official sources consulted by this newspaper, some indigenous people live by carrying up to 80 kilos of cocaine on their backs. There are one-day routes and others up to 15. Depending on the distance, they charge 15,000, 20,000 or 30,000 pesos per kilo of drugs they transport.
Unfortunately for the neighbors, not only are there coca crops, but they are immersed in a drug trafficking route to Brazil. The Caquetá river becomes the Puré on Brazilian soil, a magnificent highway for drug traffickers both because of its navigability and the difficulty of controlling it. Therefore, homicides, the exodus of those threatened, such as Manuel’s, and the recruitment of minors by the FARC-EP, with which the government is beginning peace negotiations, are common. People have to submit to the guerrilla rules, including the law of silence.
From now on they will have to start a new life, in Guaviare, where the FARC are also strong, or in another place in Colombia where they feel calm.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
