No tits, no paradise

Today’s traquetos have called forth a new look: narco-estética. The idea pops up in almost every magazine I open and almost every television show I watch. A talent manager describes the look to me. “It’s the aesthetic of the hot babe, the mamacita. Small nose. Thick lips. A lot of this,” she says, pointing to her chest, “and a lot of that,” patting her buttocks. “All fake. And they are very blond.”

And so, instead of being taken over by the FARC, the rebel group fighting in the jungle for the past 50 years, Colombia has been overcome by silicone. Breast augmentations have become so popular that Medellín, the model’s hometown, is known as Silicone Valley.

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Her mother gave her implants for her 18th birthday, after she had caught the national eye as a bikini-clad poster girl for a beer company. Her career took off, helped also by the notoriety of her romance. Soon, thousands of young women believed that if they looked like the golden girl from Medellín, they could land one of the dealers. A traqueto match was a ticket out of poverty in a country with few opportunities for women—a reality captured by what was one of Colombia’s most popular television shows, Without Tits There Is No Paradise, a soap opera about a flat-chested poor teenager who wants to sell her virginity for a pair of implants.

Silvana Paternostro, The Atlantic. Drug Busts.