Assault of the enormous rodents or class struggle? Argentina’s wealthy riled by new neighbors | Argentina

Nordelta is Argentina’s most famous residential complex: an enclave of spacious houses for the rich in the middle of a dreamy landscape of lakes and streams north of Buenos Aires.

However, environmentalists are questioning its existence as it was built on the wetlands of the Paraná, the second most important river in South America after the Amazon.

But now nature is defending itself against the wealthy residents of the northern delta.

In recent weeks, the community has been attacked by capybaras, destroying manicured lawns, biting dogs and causing traffic accidents.

“Not only do they destroy gardens, but their excrement has also become a problem,” a local told La Nación, complaining that local wildlife authorities have banned residents from touching the large rodents.

I never thought I’d be alive to see capybaras, tame the chetos, and fight the mother of all battles in the North Delta.

I’m like this: pic.twitter.com/Gy6t7viQUS

– 𝔸𝕝𝕞𝕚𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕥𝕖 ℙ𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕘𝕒𝕤. (@ DaniloZurita8) August 18, 2021

Some Nordelta residents are reported to have responded with their hunting rifles, but many other Argentines have used social media to defend the rodents – known locally as carpinchos.

In politically polarized Argentina, progressive Peronists see Nordelta as the enclave of an upper class that strives to marginalize the common people – and some have portrayed the capybaras as the rodent vanguard of the class struggle with only a partly winking tongue.

“My total support for the recovery of the Peronist Carpinchos of the North Delta
their living space, ”tweeted an internet car.

Adult capybaras can grow up to one meter long, over 60 cm high and weigh up to 60 kg. They are naturally sociable and live in groups of 10 to 20 individuals.

Renowned ecologist Enrique Viale said it was a mistake to label the rodent influx an invasion. “It’s the other way around: Nordelta has invaded the Carpinchos ecosystem,” said Viale, who has been campaigning for 10 years with many others for Congress to pass a law to protect wetlands from development.

“Wealthy real estate developers with government support must destroy nature in order to sell their customers the dream of living in the wilderness – because the buyers of these houses want nature, but without mosquitoes, snakes or carpinchos,” he said.

These vast Paraná wetlands stretch from northern Argentina to the River Plate and the Atlantic Ocean, but have been attacked by urban sprawl and by livestock and soy mega-farms, some of which are responsible for the forest fires that have devastated vast areas.

“Nordelta is the oversized paradigm of residential complexes built on wetlands. The first thing it does is take away the absorbing function of the land so that in extreme weather events the poorer surrounding neighborhoods are flooded. As always, it is the poor who ultimately pay the price. “