Fauns, nymphs at play in the Argentine pampas

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The speck on the map called Dennehy, a cow-burg lost in the vastness of the Argentine plains, is the kind of place where folks pass the time watching the occasional car come and go. A big event for the 200 or so inhabitants is the thrice-weekly arrival of the train that connects from Buenos Aires, 160 miles to the east.

Founded by impoverished Irish immigrants in the 19th century, Dennehy’s big moment was a 1941 regional soccer championship, still commemorated. An unlikely setting for a South American crime of passion. Yet the sensation-seeking press descended en masse this week after a singular court ruling. The suspect was acquitted in the execution-style shooting death of a laborer, Angel Enrique Palacios, who had allegedly experienced ‘relations’’ with the suspect’s wife and sister-in-law, noted the Argentine daily Clarin.

A judicial panel cited a lack of proof, but also noted a bizarrely permissive moral ambience, describing Dennehy thusly: ‘A mythological Greek woods where various rural fauns and nymphs clandestinely and openly consummate their romantic encounters, some fleeting, some lasting.’’ Lurid tales followed about the debauched, inbred pueblo of the pampas. Villagers are indignant. They are demanding a judicial apology. Some wonder if they missed the fun all these years. As local rep Jorge Silvestre explained: ‘Residents are really offended by this decision. It is a defamation against the morals of the people of Dennehy.’’

— Patrick J. McDonnell and Andres D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires