“I would like that one day they get to know other parts of the planet, Europe, Asia, Oceania, since they have the opportunity. That Lesly and her brothers are open-minded and children of the world. Although they already are because many people, after what they happened, he wants to see them. And they will see them”.

Manuel Ronoque, father of the four lost children lost for 40 days in the Amazon, assures that his future and that of his offspring is in a big city. They will not return to his homeland, he assures in dialogue with EL MUNDO, in a hotel in the center of the Colombian capital where he awaits news of his children.

“I hope to settle in Bogotá, although the Indian is always an Indian and I will not lose the culture of our people, which I liked from a very young age,” he notes.

In mid-April, he received a death threat from the criminal gang Farc-Ep. He hired a boat to escape and leave his home behind, in Puerto Sábalo, in the Los Monos reservation [territory], three hours from Araracuara on the Caquetá river. The village has a military base and airstrip. They only fly cargo planes and small planes like the one that crashed on May 1.

The army helped him leave for San José del Guaviare in a military plane and, as soon as he had enough money to buy five tickets for his family, at 700,000 pesos each (155 euros), a fortune in those places, he asked Magdalena to meet him in said capital of the department of Guaviare. The plane crash cut short his initial plans and now his life will take other paths.

But the happiness of finding his children alive has been overshadowed by the alleged allegations of mistreatment he inflicted on his deceased wife. Ronoque defends himself by claiming that the discussions with Magdalena are intimate matters, of his private sphere, that should not be aired in public, although he reluctantly accepts that the ICBF (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare) does not allow him to keep his biological children, Tien Noriel and Cristin, at the medical center. Not to see Lesly and Soleiny again, his stepdaughters.

Despite everything, it seems unfair to Manuel that they marginalize him after always taking care of the four children and participating from the beginning in the search work. “I never, ever lost faith that we were going to find them alive,” he repeats. In any case, he trusts that they will be delivered to him later.

“The important thing is that they are well and then we will solve everything,” he says. He counts in his favor with the support of the most respected Huitoto elders in his community. Otherwise, he would not have managed to get some twenty Amazonian indigenous people to agree to join the painful and risky search for the little ones in the virgin jungle. Several of them came out sick with dengue, three had to be hospitalized, and Manuel complains that they have not received the treatment or the help they deserve and that they expected from the Government.

And it will not be easy for him to restart a life so different from the one he led, as governor in Puerto Sábalo, a leadership he inherited from his father, although he has been offered to make a documentary and a film about his sons’ feat. The little ones, Tien Noriel and Cristin, had them with Magdalena, who died in the accident. The two oldest, Lesly and Soleiny, are from a previous relationship with his wife.

The four brothers remain isolated in the Military Hospital of Bogotá, recovering from chronic malnutrition and psychological trauma from the loss of their mother and the ordeal they lived through for 40 days. When the first indigenous rescuers gave them up, five-year-old Tien Noriel asked them crying if her mother was alive or dead.

The ICBF (Colombian Institute for Family Welfare) interrupted family visits and restricted access to their rooms as much as possible so that they are not disturbed by media and political harassment, given the worldwide interest that their case has aroused.

The last medical report, issued on Wednesday, indicates that “despite their adequate evolution, from the infectious point of view, they are still considered at high risk due to their nutritional deficit. Management of the infectious pathologies inherent to the adverse conditions to those who were confronted”.

He adds that “the children remain in the pediatric area and the evolution of each one of them is favourable. The procedures established by the interdisciplinary team have allowed the stabilization and improvement of the biochemical profiles, with an adequate tolerance to the increase in the contributions nutrition they have required”.

For the indigenous leaders who accompany Manuel, originally from the same region of Caquetá, they should not build a wall between the father and his children. “He has been a good father, he took care of the four of them, he brought them forward,” one of them, from Araracuara, assures this newspaper, who asks not to give his name. “And Narciso Andrés Jacobombaire, Lesly and Soleiny’s biological father, left them six years ago, when Manuel joined Magdalena Mucutuy.”

Ronoque insists that he is only looking for “a better opportunity for my children, it is what I was doing and I will continue to do it. I never thought this would happen, but God had everything prepared and He knows the things he does.”

The maternal grandparents, who do not know the two small children because they have been living far from their land for several years, claim custody of all four. But his eldest son, Ezequiel Mucutuy, tells this newspaper that they will settle the differences according to their ancestral traditions. “He (Manuel) made a mistake, he must correct it and clear things up with my parents and siblings. With chili, mambe (derived from coca leaves) and tobacco, and having a dialogue, sitting, in the mambeadero (center of meeting), in the nocturnal hours”.

But the ICBF will also give its opinion and together they will have to determine the best destination for Lesly, Soleiny, Tien Noriel and Cristin.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project