I remember news about that. It was in Campinas - there was a huge capybara population boom.

That city is in a specially bad spot for this sort of disease because it's heavily populated like Curitiba, but unlike Curitiba it has a huge rural area. Like, you walk in Barão Geraldo neighbourhood and it's booming, then you walk a bit more and suddenly you're in the middle of nowhere. The odds of infecting livestock that infects people are fairly high, and with the demographic density in Campinas proper you get it from person to person.

Still better to do what the OP did though. If you want to hug the oversized rodents, make sure that there's people taking care of them, and ensuring that they're OK.