Los suicidas del fin del mundo : Crónica de un pueblo patagónico

Las Heras is a town located in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz, which sprang up in the Patagonian desert with the arrival of the railroad and state-run oil exploitation. When prosperity faded, due in part to the privatization of the oil company, only the wind, indifference, and a handful of inhabitants remained. Between 1997 and 1999, the suicides of twelve young people, all well-known in the town, shook Las Heras. There was no official list of those deaths, and no one raised the alarm. It was said that strange things were happening in the town, that a sect was behind the deaths, but also that, in that desolate land, there was no future for young people. Published in 2005, *The Suicides of the End of the World* was Leila Guerriero's seminal book. The Argentine journalist traveled to Las Heras to investigate the series of suicides. She walked the same windy streets where the suicides had occurred and interviewed the mothers, boyfriends, sisters, and friends of the deceased, as well as prostitutes, hairdressers, and school teachers who had known them. To reconstruct those lives, she listened to testimonies—sometimes incomplete, sometimes contradictory—that revealed harsh and forgotten existences.