The Indigenous Guards Who Saved Colombia’s Missing Children

At first he heard a soft cry. Then, just beyond the broad leaves of the jungle, Nicolás Ordóñez could make out the figure of a little girl, a baby in her arms.

Mr. Ordóñez, 27, a young man from the humblest of backgrounds, stepped forward and quickly became a national hero. He and three other men had found four Colombian children who had survived a terrifying plane crash followed by 40 harrowing days in the Amazon rainforest – and whose plight had drawn worldwide attention.

But these men were not wearing the uniform of the Colombian army, or any other armed forces they support millions of dollars mobilized for the massive search.

Instead, they were members of a civilian patrol known as the Indigenous Guard — a confederation of defense groups that have sought to protect large swathes of Indigenous territory from violence and environmental destruction associated with the country’s long-standing internal conflict .

Many on hold say their cause has long been marginalized. Now they’re at the center of the country’s biggest story.

“What we are, the Indigenous Guardians, has been made visible,” said Luis Acosta, who coordinates the multiple groups collectively known as the Indigenous Guardian. “I think this can earn us respect and recognition.”

While the guards still don’t know how the four children survived the jungle, interviews in their hometown on Colombia’s southern outskirts provide the deepest account yet of what led them to their rescue.

Colombia’s indigenous guards usually wear cloth vests and carry wooden rods, not guns. And yet over the years they have resisted incursions from left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, oil companies and even the Colombian security forces.

Their sudden plunge into the global spotlight began in May, after a single-prop plane crashed in the remote Colombian Amazon.

A search team soon found the bodies of the three adults on board – but the four young passengers went missing, sparking an intense, haunted search that involved an unlikely collaboration between the military and the native guard.

The children, ages 1 to 14, are siblings from an indigenous group called the Huitoto, also known as the Murui Muina.

According to Manuel Ranoque, the father of the two youngest children, they had boarded a plane with their mother, a community leader and the pilot to escape the violence of a faction of a left-wing guerrilla group in their Amazon city. (The guerrilla group denied that in text messages to The Times.)

The rescue team’s work captivated people around the world and when the children were found alive on June 9, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said: applauded the joining of forces between the indigenous guard and the army as a symbol of a ‘new Colombia’.

Mr Ordóñez and the three other men who found the children – Eliecer Muñoz, Dairo Kumariteke and Edwin Manchola – are all from Puerto Leguízamo, a town on the southern edge of the Colombian Amazon where drug trafficking is rampant and armed groups fight for control of the industry . They are also Murui Muina.

On a recent day in Puerto Leguízamo, Mr. Ordóñez and others were in a round church building known as a maloca among indigenous groups and described why they signed up for the rescue mission. Light shone through a thatched roof. In the center of the dirt floor was a bowl of brilliant green mambe, a mild stimulant made from ground coca leaf that was sacred to the tribe.

Mr. Ordóñez, born in a town with only seven families, left school at age 10 to work, moving boxes at a grocery store in exchange for his choice of damaged produce.

Then, when he was 14, he was recruited by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the leftist guerrilla group that spent decades fighting the Colombian government and terrorizing the country. He said he joined voluntarily out of economic desperation.

His experience is not unique: during the country’s long war, thousands of children have been recruited by armed groups.

As a minor, Mr Ordóñez said, he was not assigned armed combat. But he quickly became disillusioned with the group’s violent tactics, and when he was captured by the military a year later, he saw it as divine intervention.

The improbability that he would rise from fighting the state to working alongside it did not escape his notice.

“Yesterday I was an enemy of these people, and now I work for them,” he said. “How crazy!”

At the age of 15, Mr. Ordóñez participated in a government reintegration program for child victims of recruitment. Over the next three years, he took courses in governance and did community service in violence-ravaged neighborhoods, he said. When he was 18, he returned to Puerto Leguízamo and experienced a “spiritual revolution”, immersing himself in the native customs.

In May, the Native Guard called to ask if he wanted to become an official member. He agreed. Days later, he answered a call for volunteers to join the government – dubbed Operation Hope – to find the missing siblings.

Once a child member of an armed group, he had a new mission: “That’s my war now,” he said. “To save children.”

Today’s Indigenous Guard is a by-product of the conflict in Colombia, much of whose modern history dates back to the creation of the FARC, which pledged to overthrow the government and redistribute land and wealth.

At least 450,000 people were killed, either by right-wing paramilitaries, the FARC, the army or other armed groups. A peace deal in 2016 led the FARC to lay down its arms. But the violence continues, with old and new groups vying for territorial control.

The modern Indigenous Guard was established about 20 years ago to protect communities against armed groups, said Mr Acosta, the coordinator.

Sometimes the guards band together and march through Bogotá, the capital, to protest violence. Other times, they work separately and patrol their territories.

In all, the country’s guardians have tens of thousands of members, Mr Acosta said.

Men, women and children as young as 13 can join, he added. Members receive first aid and are taught history and politics.

Mr Muñoz, 48, another member who found the children, was also driven to help with the search because of the conflict.

Mr. Muñoz joined the Colombian army at the age of 18 and returned to his community more than a decade later, after learning that his father and brother had disappeared, which he believed was the work of an armed group. (At least 120,000 Colombians were victims of enforced disappearance between 1985 and 2016, according to government.)

He combed the region for information, but never found out why they were taken or what happened to them.

“I put myself in your shoes,” he told the children’s father when he joined the search. “I know what it’s like to suffer and know that you would give your life for your family.”

According to the army, about 300 people took part in the search. Members of the Indigenous Guard and the military spoke positively of their collaboration, explaining that the combination of the military technology and the guards’ ancestral knowledge was key to finding the children.

The group from Puerto Leguízamo slept in the jungle for three weeks.

They braved wild animals, venomous snakes and poisonous plants in the oppressive heat of the forest, where trees 100 feet (30 m) tall or taller can block the light. Once the rescue team found a diaper. Another time, a footprint. Each discovery cheered the team, but desperation set in when hard rain halted the search.

On Friday, June 9, the army told the Puerto Leguízamo group to proceed alone, without accompanying soldiers, something they had never done before.

The native guards were exhausted but determined.

After a few hours, when they sat down to share some mambé, Mr. Muñoz picked up a turtle.

“If you give me the kids, I’ll let you go,” he said. “If you don’t give me the kids, I’ll eat you.”

They were trudging another quarter mile up a steep hill when they heard a scream at about 2:00 pm.

“The kids!” they said.

Mr. Ordóñez, who had his eyes on the ground looking for signs of life, stopped in his tracks. He moved slowly toward the sound of the sound. When he lifted his head, there was Lesly, 13, holding the hand of her sister Soleiny, 9, who held the baby, Cristin, 1, in her arms.

The 5-year-old boy, Tien Noriel, was nearby, lying on a bed of leaves.

Mr. Ordóñez, wanting to comfort the children, told them that they came from the same people. “We are family,” he said. Then the children hugged their rescuers.

At that moment, Mr. Kumariteke broke the relative silence of the jungle and began to sing, thanking God.

Each guard was carrying a child. Mr. Ordóñez carried Lesly down the mountain on his back for hours, back to a military rendezvous point.

As part of the deal, they released the turtle.