An extraordinary gripping survival story that also reveals the struggles for social justice of
the Indigenous people of Colombia and the Amazon. In June 2023 four children - Lesly
Soleiny Tien and Crispin - were found alive in the Colombian Amazon 40 days after the
aircraft they were travelling in had crashed and killed the three adults on board (the pilot
the co-pilot and the children's mother). The eldest child 13-year-old Lesly took the
decision to leave her dying mother gather her siblings - aged 9 5 and eleven months - and
head into the jungle. She kept herself and her siblings alive for 40 days and nights finally
emerging when heavily armed soldiers closed in yelling her name above the sound of barking
dogs. Forty Days the Jungle follows the compelling characters involved in the crash and what
followed: Maria Fatima Valencia the children's grandmother who had taught Lesly how to
survive in the jungle General Pedro Sánchez who led the rescue team the shady figure of
Manuel Ranoque the father of the two youngest children and even the Colombian president
Gustavo Petro. But there is much more to this than an extraordinary survival story.
Interwoven chapters address key questions about Colombian and Latin American history society
and political economy - the answers to which shed light on the socio-political state of much of
the world today. Colombia's problems mirror in many ways the rising Global South in its
21st-century struggles against colonial histories and a globalised world.
