Rapid wildfires are spreading throughout the natural wildlife region of Patagonia in Southern Argentina, burning more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) over the last week, according to government officials.
Fires began on Monday in the small rural town of Epuyén in the Andes region, a town of 2,000 residents, and have since spread, torching thousands of hectares of wildlife terrain in one of the most coveted natural sceneries in the world.
“There's no way to describe what we're living through. Every five minutes a new fire starts. It's hell,” one local resident, Flavia Broffoni, recounts on social media, according to Buenos Aires Times.
Over 3,000 tourists have since evacuated from the region, with over 500 local government personnel deployed to the areas surrounding Chubut Province to battle the blazes.
Local residents have been uprooted from their homes to escape the spread of the raging fires, sparking accusations by nearby community members who are lashing out at Argentina’s Jewish population for attempting to seize the territories.
Social media has become a major source of fuel for anti-semitic rhetoric from local residents in the Patagonia region, accusing the Argentine government of President Javier Milei of ceding the region’s territory to the nation’s Jewish financial interests, which some speculate are interested in utilizing the terrain to fulfill their “real estate and mining interests” in the region, claims one resident.
In early December of 2025, the Milei government announced a series of proposed reforms regarding the purchase of “rural lands” by “foreign private individuals.” Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni announced proposed plans to push for a full liberalization of the purchase of rural real estate in the Southern Patagonia region by private foreigners in the event of wildfires.
The proposal has later contributed to a flood of accusations by users on X and other social media outlets, lambasting the federal government for “giving away the lands to foreigners.”
The Patagonia region, however, frequently experiences the spread of wildfires in 2022, 2024, and early 2025 in the Neuquén, Río Negro, and Santa Cruz localities, losing over 32,000 hectares of wildlife terrain.
