Diary 
Michael Taussig
‘All that is left of a person is their name,’ Olivia Mostacilla told me during my month in Colombia, the first time I’d been back in two years. She wasn’t referring to the paramilitary massacres, which have stopped in the past few months because of the on-going ‘demobilisation’ of the paras organised by President Uribe’s government, but to the craze for plastic surgery, especially the variety known as lipo-escultura or ‘fat sculpture’.
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Michael Taussig teaches anthropology at Columbia and writes regularly on Colombia. His books include My Cocaine Museum and Law in a Lawless Land.
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