That night at camp, Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, reached for one of the most sacred rituals of Indigenous groups of the Amazon — yagé, a bitter tea made of plants native to the rainforest, more widely known as ayahuasca. For centuries, the hallucinogenic cocktail has been used as a cure for all ailments by people in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil.
Henry Guerrero, a volunteer who joined the search from the children’s home village near Araracuara, told The Associated Press his aunt prepared the yagé for the group. They believed it would induce visions that could lead them to the children.
“I told them, ‘There’s nothing to do here. We will not find them with the naked eye. The last resource is to take yagé,’” Guerrero, 56, said. “The trip really takes place in very special moments. It is something very spiritual.”
Ranoque sipped, and the men kept watch for a few hours. When the psychotropic effects passed, he told them it hadn’t worked.
Some searchers were ready to leave. But the next morning, 40 days after the crash, an elder reached for what little was left of the yagé and drank it. Some people take it to connect with themselves, cure illnesses or heal a broken heart. Elder José Rubio was convinced it would eventually help find the kids, Guerrero said.
Rubio dreamed for some time. He vomited, a common side effect.
This time, he said, it had worked. In his visions, he saw them. He told Guerrero: “We’ll find the children today.”
The four children — Lesly, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin — grew up around Araracuara, a small Amazon village in Caquetá Department that can be reached only by boat or small plane. Ranoque said the siblings had happy but independent lives because he and his wife, Magdalena Mucutuy, were often away from home.
Lesly, 13, was the mature, quiet one. Soleiny, 9, was playful, and Tien, nearly 5 before the crash, was restless. Cristin, 11 months then, was just learning to walk.
At home, Mucutuy grew onions and cassava and used the latter to produce fariña, a type of flour, for the family to eat and sell. Lesly learned to cook at age 8; in the adults’ absence, she often cared for her siblings.
The morning of May 1, the children, their mother and an uncle boarded a light plane. They were headed to the town of San José del Guaviare. Weeks earlier, Ranoque had fled his home village, an area where illegal drug cultivation, mining and logging have thrived for decades. He told AP he feared pressure from people connected to his industry, though he refused to provide details about the nature of his job or business dealings.
“The work there is not safe,” Ranoque said. “And it is illegal. It has to do with other people … in a sector that I can’t mention because I put myself more at risk.”
He said he left Mucutuy $9 million Colombian pesos, about $2,695 U.S. dollars, before leaving to pay for food, other necessities and the charter flight. He wanted the children out of the village because he feared they could be recruited by one of the rebel groups in the area.
They were on their way to meet Ranoque when the pilot of the Cessna single-engine propeller plane declared an emergency due to engine failure. The aircraft fell off the radar a short time later.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday … The engine failed me again … I’m going to look for a river … I have here a river to my right,” pilot Hernando Murcia reported to air traffic control at 7:43 a.m., according to a preliminary report released by aviation authorities.
“103 miles out of San José … I’m going to land.”
The Colombian military launched a search for the plane when it failed to arrive at its destination. About 10 days later, with no plane and no signs of life found, the Indigenous volunteers joined the effort. They were much more familiar with the terrain and the families in the area. One man told them the plane was making an odd noise when it flew over his house. That helped them sketch out a search plan that followed the Apaporis River.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
