“They are children of the forest, and now they are the children of Colombia. » It is with these words that President Gustavo Petro ended his speech to announce the rescue on June 9 of Lesly, Soleiny, Tien Noriel and Cristin Mucutuy, these children found in the Amazon rainforest after surviving a plane crash on June 1er may.
These children raised in the Uitoto Muinane community of Puerto Sabalo – Los Monos, on the banks of the Caqueta River, in the middle of the green immensity, were able to count on the teachings received from a very young age, as is customary among indigenous peoples of Amazonia: knowledge of plants, sense of responsibility, effort and work, respect for life and the forest, madre selva.
The message from the President of the Colombian Republic is clear. It wasn’t the forty days of wandering that made them “children of the forest” ; they already were, and this is key to understanding their survivability. On the other hand, they have indeed become the symbol of a multicultural nation, now resolutely turned towards peace.
Collaboration between the army and indigenous communities
In an unprecedented way, the “miracle” of their rescue tells the whole country that every life counts, as if to ward off the deadly war that still persists in certain territories as well as in the flesh and minds of many Colombians, in full work of memory and healing from past trauma.
This discourse also emphasizes the importance that indigenous cultures have acquired at the national level, thanks to a structured social movement since the 1970s. Indigenous peoples benefit from institutional recognition, collective territorial rights and ever-increasing representation. large in the state.
These peoples also enjoy a certain aura with a largely mixed-race population who admire the coherence of their struggles for the defense of their cultures and territories, even if structural racism persists in certain social strata and can sometimes be read in media treatment of the story of the Mucutuy children. For the first time, the military operation to find missing children, called “Esperanza”, was carried out in close collaboration between the army and the indigenous communities.
These communities had always resisted the intrusion of any armed actor on their territory, be it guerrillas, paramilitaries or the regular army. This collaboration therefore marks a turning point in the construction of peace. It is indeed the intercultural exchanges, established for more than a month in the heart of a primary forest where possibly uncontacted nomadic tribes evolve, which made it possible to find the children.
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