Transformative Possibilities: Politics and Cosmetic Surgery in the Bolivarian Revolution

I examine the intersection of politics and aesthetics in a public hospital in Caracas, Venezuela in the first years of the twenty-first century. Given Venezuela's long-standing embrace of physical enhancement and the contradictions of the medical values of cosmetic surgery with those of Bolivarian socialism, the changing surgical practices at a well-established public site offer a significant case for considering how different actors negotiate the dialectics of care. In the face of increasing resource shortages, negotiations of aesthetic care contributed to tensions in the clinical encounter as patients creatively pushed Bolivarian policies to support their pursuits of aesthetic self-improvement.