Argentina was a whaling country, a wolfhound and will now be a “guanaco hunter”. Using bugs and forests to move the human economic wheel is an old idea.
Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, boats loaded with hands, sticks and harpoons descended from the north, towards the southern seas; They came back up with furs and oil. They hunted whales, seals, penguins.
Not only hunting is killed industrially. Large-scale fishing does it by fishing.
Fishing is killing animals. It must be said, because sometimes fish are not considered as life forms.
They are seen squeezed into the net or gasping up the belly, the glass look, turned into an object, like soft and fragrant stones, without respite.
But the purpose is not to criticize “beating”, “harpooning” and other ways of annihilating.
Cows and chickens are killed every day, it will be said. True. There will be a gross difference between domestic animal and whale, but death is death.
The important thing here is to think the justification, the why. How is the killing on an industrial scale of natural species justified?
Take the case of sea lions. In the Argentine Patagonia, during the first half of the last century, they were killed in large quantities. Half a million? Plus? Why?
Answer: because they were many and ate fish; if they did not intervene, they would ruin the country. The promoters of the argument said: “they are plague”, and the Government said: “they are plagues”.
And the firefighters said: “I want to kill, trade, earn money and a prize for the illustrious citizen”.
And the government authorized, the killing occurred, there was little silver and no prizes. What there was more is fewer wolves.
After half a century, the populations are still below the levels of yesteryear.
With the whales the story was repeated. “There is like to make sweet,” said the whaling capitalists, “as if to make sweet,” said the government, and the affirmation of abundance reached to justify one of the worst faunicides in history.
By the work and grace of a Norwegian surnamed Larsen, the Argentine Fishing Company S.A., CAP was created.
There was silver for steamboats and hunting concessions in Georgias Islands.
There were sheds built to skin animals (infrastructure that was abandoned and served as a pretext for the start of a war).
There were harpooners and slaughterers and boilermakers. And there were 20,512 annihilated whales, only in the seas of Georgias and in the first quarter of a century of existence of the CAP.
Today, the descendants of the participants are all rich, educated in the best universities in the universe and enjoy unimaginable health plans … pity that is not true.
It will be said: “who knows how many concussions were avoided by burning whale oil in public lighting”.
What few know is that, during the First World War, explosives were made with whale oil derivatives; fresquitos: from the south seas straight to the trench.
Without a doubt, they found a reason for that too.
Today the wheel rolls no longer fed by wolves and whales; Only Japanese, Norwegians and a few others think about their traditions to continue harpooning.
The new wave, in our country, is not pro-harpoon or pro-stick, it could be pro-shot. In the current conjuncture, the enemy is the guanaco.
“There are guanacos to make sweet”, it is said … and the slaughter of 6,000 has just been authorized only in Santa Cruz. “It is a pilot project” it is said … will it be that they plan to authorize double, triple …?
Guanacos were always killed. The Tehuelches were experts.
Each Patagonian sheepdog works, in part, based on guanaco meat. It is provided by the puestero, who also eats it because it is first class meat, which hunts guanacos authorized by the owner, authorized by the Government. One owner says: “in my field there are guanacos like …”.
And the Government accepts and grants. The owner says: the guanaco breaks wires, takes water, eats the plant. ” And the Government agrees and signs.
If the hecatomb called guanaco is not such, it matters little. The owner sends, for that is owner … of the sheep, which are not plague, would be missing more.
The Ministry of the Environment has just authorized the killing of 6,000 guanacos in Santa Cruz.
The idea would be to drive them, shear them and sacrifice them. Why? The “why” is less relevant: the creative minds of the “entrepreneurs” always find an explanation when it comes to doing harm.
The justifications say: the guanacos cross the routes and cause accidents (it does not matter if you walk to 150), or: in Santa Cruz there is more guanaco than people, and the harmful bug desertifies.
Some scientists say: “the populations hold, put him shot just”; many others disapprove.
Is it that common sense was lost? Rationality requires effort, but common sense?
The guanacos of Santa Cruz are killed as mountains are climbed: because they are there.
They are killed because a landowner says that, selling fleece and meat, he will make himself rich, he will give work right and left, and all his employees will attend to the clinic to which Maradona goes … I doubt it.
In the name of reason, unreasonable injustices are committed in the bad social claim and in the sick litany about poverty, since we do not look at the unjust distribution of wealth.
We are facing arguments that endure because behind are the institutions of property and public administration, powers exercised in apparent synchrony with the sustainable.
The only thing that is sustained is the blow dealt to nature.
