February 22, 2013

Plastic Surgery Tourists Flock to Colombia

Images from a two-week trip to the land of lipo and breast lifts.

    Photos by Moa Karlberg/Kontinent/ZUMA; Text by Julie Rogers


It’s normal to return from vacation with a tan or a sunburn, but how about coming home with larger breasts, a nip and tuck, or a newly sculpted nose? Vacations packages offering such physical transformations are being promoted by travel agents and plastic surgeons in Colombia. About 500,000 thousand cosmetic operations are performed in the country annually—the second-highest number in South America (following Brazil).

For $10,000, Brenda Fuentes traveled from Puerto Rico to Bogotá for a two-week surgery vacation package that included liposuction, a breast lift, and a calve adjustment. It also included an apartment with maid service—not as a base for sightseeing, but as a place to recover following her operation, which left her sore and unable to get around on her own. 

Warning: Some images may be mildly NSFW.

Brenda Fuentes traveled from Puerto Rico to Bogotá, Colombia, for a two-week surgery vacation that included liposuction, a breast lift, and calve adjustment. Before her operation, she describes what she would like to change about her face.
 

Fuentes’ surgery vacation package costs $10,000 and includes an apartment with a maid. She will return here to recover from her operation, too sore to go out and play tourist.
 

Dr. Julian Morales’ plastic surgery clinic, Medical Spa, is located in a fancy area of Bogotá.
 

Dr. Morales examines Fuentes’ body before her operation.
 

Fuentes waits in the operating room.
 

Fuentes just before getting anesthetized.
 

Dr. Morales and his team perform the first part of Fuentes’ operation: liposuction.
 

Dr. Morales suctions fat from Fuentes’ body.
 

During the liposuction, fat, blood, and water are sucked out from Fuentes’ body.
 

A cross hangs in a patient’s room at Dr. Morales’ clinic.
 

Following her surgery, Fuentes must wear a girdle for several months.
 

As part of her post-op treatment, Fuentes spends an hour daily rehydrating her the skin so it heals more quickly.
 

In the days after the surgery, Fuentes’s body is still aching. She requires help from her nurse and driver to go to the clinic for a follow-up visit.

 

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“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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