
Mat Youkee
Latin America Journalist and Author
AN EXTRAORDINARY, GRIPPING SURVIVAL STORY THAT REVEALS THE STRUGGLES AND RESILIENCE OF THE COLOMBIAN AMAZON’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.
In June 2023, four Indigenous children were found alive in the Colombian Amazon, forty days after the light aircraft they had been travelling in crashed into deep jungle, killing the three adults on board. For weeks the Colombian public had been transfixed by clues of the children’s survival, of Indigenous tales of malign forest spirits, and of the unconventional tactics of the huge search team. But most now despaired of ever finding the children.
Thirteen-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucuty never gave up hope.
Forty Days in the Jungle tells the story of how the eldest child kept her siblings safe and fed during their time in the wilderness. It follows the battle-hardened soldiers and the brave Indigenous volunteers who undertook the search operation. And it delves into the Indigenous mythology — the spirits, shamans, and psychedelic potions — that was central to the drama and made it a rescue mission unlike any other. By investigating the children’s motives for travel, the tragedy of their backstory, and the months that followed their rescue, it also shines a light on the painful history of Colombia’s Amazonian peoples. Lesly and her siblings were survivors before they ever set foot on the plane.
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Mat has extensively covered Chinese investment in Panama and warned, in 2019, that the Panama Canal could become the center of the US-China trade war.
Macondo is Latin America’s most famous fictional village and synonymous with “magical realism.” Sixty years prior to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, however, Joseph Conrad introduced readers to the port city of Sulaco, in a fictional country bearing a striking resemblance to modern day Colombia and Panama. His novel, Nostromo, is one of the great analyses of the political-economy of colonialism. In a media landscape prone to view Latin America through a Macondo lens, this Substack is written in the spirit of Conrad’s understanding of the workings of power.
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Consultancy
In 2016 I founded Nostromo Research, an advisory firm offering political risk analysis, due diligence reports and business intelligence on Latin America and the Caribbean. I have worked on projects across the continent for a number of blue-chip consultancies, NGOs and international think tanks.