In the early hours of Tuesday the 16th, Corporal Rodrigo Gómez took his own life at Quinta de Olivos, meters from where the President rests. He was 21 years old. That same afternoon, gendarme Diego Kalilec, of the same age, committed suicide in Salta. In the early hours of the next day, Army non-commissioned officer Juan Peireira, 48, was found hanged. On Thursday the 18th, soldier Facundo Lima shot himself and ended his life in Ushuaia. He was also 21 years old and on psychiatric leave.
Except for the last case, in the first three cases economic malaria appears as a factor. These events shocked the forces and spread throughout the country. But the underlying reality is even more worrying: they do not seem to be isolated events at all. Salary and housing crisis, a social work in pieces that makes it impossible, among other things, access to mental health therapies, to which is added the fact of the particular characteristics of these jobs (among them, access to a weapon), show an even more complex panorama.
Radiography
This year the sociologist Santiago Galar, former national director of Police Welfare, published “Police suicide in Argentina, contributions to the understanding of the phenomenon in a sociological key (2016-2023)”. There appears a shocking fact: the suicide rate of members of the forces was 0.18 per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to 0.09 for the general population of that same age group, between 20 and 60 years old. Exactly double.
That statistic was made with the records of 2018. The precise data of these events within the Forces is usually kept under lock and key, a logic that mixes not wanting to encourage these situations with the intention of avoiding being in the middle of the public (and political) eye. However, beyond the latest cases, others appear. In July, police officer Alejandro Tejerina committed suicide at the Churruca Hospital and, according to journalist Ivy Cángaro, he previously left a letter for the director of the place – it is the main health institution of the Federal Police – where he left complaints about poor care. On the last day of October, the Prefectural official, Cristian Roa, 37, took his own life. On November 20, it was prefect Brian Filliez, 32 years old. At the beginning of December, Prefect Gastón Viassolo, 37, committed suicide on the outskirts of Rosario. In the Prefecture, at least, they speak of 15 cases this year alone.
Almost two hundred years before Galar’s work, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote perhaps his most famous work. In his book “Suicide” he dismantled the idea that this act was only an individual decision, to maintain instead that it is deeply linked to the crisis that a society is going through at a certain moment. And the Frenchman’s thesis would seem to return to apply to Argentina.
There are several factors that explain the context in which these cases occur. The first is the enormous salary crisis that the forces are going through. Despite the story of the Milei government, which highlights this institution and its members whenever it can, the effective reality is very far away. The first rank of an Army soldier starts at just over $600,000, while a report from the Encuentro Foundation – from August – shows that in the security forces the situation is just as dramatic: the salary of a gendarme starts at $688,000, a prefect at $757,000, a federal police officer at $848,000 and an airport security police officer at $551,000.
According to the work, the drop in the real salary from December 2023 to this part is 40%, and the number of casualties is a record: 4,752. To this dramatic salary we must add that many members of the forces are transferred to different territories for their work, and the rent comes from that same salary. According to the first investigations by Justice, the gendarme Kalilec was pressured by his housing situation: he shared the roof with three gendarmes, but they were moved to another province just one day before he ended his life. It’s just an example.
To the terrible salary we must add the crisis of the social work of the forces, IOSFA, which has an enormous deficit: according to specialists it exceeds $160 billion. That means fewer and worse benefits, and therefore less support for physical and emotional health. “In this world, having a mental health problem is seen as a factor of weakness. To this we must add that it is impossible to pay a psychologist with what they are charging. People implode,” says Sabina Frederic, former Minister of Security. “In addition, asking for a psychiatric license means less money, the salary remains the same but you stop collecting the additional ones,” says Natasa Loizou, former director of Anmac.
It is clear that this dramatic situation fits with a more general one: according to a report by the Financial Intelligence Research Foundation, suicide in Argentina reached its historical record (9.8 per 100,000 inhabitants), causing more than twice as many deaths as insecurity. The outlook is dark.
