How the four brothers were rescued in the Amazon rainforest

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Lost Children

Netflix documentary, The lost children, tells the incredible true story of the four Mucutuy children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian Amazon. In May 2023, the four Mucutuy children (aged 11 months, four years, nine years and 13 years), their mother and two other passengers boarded a small plane to fly to their father’s hometown to see him. Several hours later, the press confirmed that the plane had disappeared somewhere in the Amazon rainforest, thus beginning the search for the plane and its passengers.

The Netflix documentary describes how the search for the children’s plane became national news due to the danger of the place they were flying over and the stories of the children themselves. Their age brought widespread concern to the situation because if they had survived the accident, it would have meant that four young children would have been alone in the jungle. Both the military and local indigenous groups, including the children’s father’s community, immediately began searching for the plane and the young people, hoping to reach them as quickly as possible.

The 4 children were the only survivors of the plane crash in 2023

The other three passengers died in the accident

There were seven passengers on the plane traveling through the Colombian rainforest, but only the four children survived. Tragically, their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, as well as the other two adult men on the plane, died in the crash. The documentary is dedicated to them. The children were then left alone in the jungle. Lesly, the oldest of the four siblings, later said she woke up on the plane and, realizing her mother had died, helped get her siblings off the plane to safety.

The lost children describes how the accident left the children alone in the forest surrounded by dangerous animalslike jaguars or poisonous snakes. Lesly was also injured in the accident and had a large cut on her face and injured leg. Furthermore, the children were also left without a source of food or water, meaning they had to find their own sustenance while at the same time avoiding the dangers of the natural environment. Lesly even says at the end of the documentary that she had to kill a snake with a stick after the children almost sat on it.

How old were the lost children at the time of the accident?

The children were 11 months, 4 years, 9 years and 13 years

The eldest sister, Lesly, was just 13 when the plane crashed and she took responsibility for her siblings during their time in the jungle that followed. Tien Noriel was four years old, and when the brothers were found, one of his rescuers commented that he looked like he hadn’t survived two more days in the jungle. Soleiny was nine years old at the time of the accident.

The youngest child in the accident, Cristin, was just 11 months old when the plane was lost. A scene in The lost children shows several soldiers singing happy birthday to Cristin’s first birthday and praying that they would find the children that day. Although it was still several weeks after the children were found, it is incredibly lucky that Cristin’s siblings, especially Lesly, were smart enough to keep them all alive.

Operation Hope explained and how the lost children were found

The Colombian military expanded the search for children with Operation Hope

The Colombian military mobilized very quickly to help search for the children after the accident, a search they called “Operation Hope“. Initially believing that everyone had died in the accident, they added even more support when it became clear that the children had survived and were wandering the jungle alone. Likewise, indigenous groups immediately began searching for the children, using their lived knowledge of the forest. tropical in your favor.

The lost children shows how the military brought in more people, shouted the children’s names into the forest, flew over the forest in a helicopter with a recording of the grandmother’s voice telling the children to stay where they were, and played the same message on megaphones in the forest. The Colombian military had 100 units spread across the area where they thought the children might be. The documentary also showed a group of men dropping leaflets from a helicopter telling children to stay near the water and not move, all in an attempt to locate them.

At the same time, indigenous search groups also mobilized to find the children. However, they did not want to work with the military because of past conflicts and because they felt that soldiers were not familiar with how to survive in the rainforest or how to think like children when moving around. This creates a voltage source The lost childrenalthough the documentary only provides glimpses of the social circumstances that created the conflict through the voices of the men interviewed.

When it finally became clear that the military was unable to find the children, members of the Indigenous Guard decided to help them in the search. The groups gradually began to work together, although there were still doubts as to whether they would ever find the children. Just when everyone was about to give up, one of the last remaining groups of volunteers finally located the children alive, but in need of immediate attention.

How long did the lost children spend in the Amazon rainforest

The children spent 40 days in the rainforest

The search for the missing children from Mucutuy lasted 40 days. The children looked out for each other, with Lesly serving as protector of her younger siblings. The documentary reveals that they survived on fruits they found in the wild. Lesly also shared in a voiceover that the children were able to hear their grandmother’s message as it played in the helicopter, but were never able to locate the voice as they wandered around.

In the second half of the documentary, it is revealed by the children’s aunt and grandmother that they believed the children were purposely hiding of the search to avoid seeing his father, Manuel Ranoque. The lost children does not fully explore the ramifications of these statements or verify with the children whether this is true, but it does add more information about the lives of the Mucutuy children before the accident.

In the final minutes of The lost childrenit is revealed that they are currently in the custody of Colombia’s social assistance service and that their father has been arrested for abuse. After everything the brothers have been through, the only ray of hope that the documentary provides is that all the Mucutuy brothers are alive and well and can see their families again.