Secret nose job allegations, ‘Rolexgate,’ and the curse of the Peruvian presidency

But in this country, presidential scandals – proven or alleged – are so commonplace that one of its prisons has housed four disgraced former leaders.

Allegations of a secret nose job are threatening Peruvian President Dina Boluarte’s grip on power – and that’s only the tip of her problems. The Latin American leader, whose popularity has cratered to among the lowest in the world – with a disapproval rating of 93%, according to a recent Datum Internacional poll – is facing a string of investigations at the hands of Peru’s Attorney General. The most serious of these involve the deaths of more than 60 people during a crackdown by government security forces on the protests that followed the ouster of her predecessor Pedro Castillo in December 2022; the more lurid include allegations she accepted Rolex watches and other jewelry as bribes and transported a fugitive politician in a presidential vehicle. But it is the plastic surgery on her nose in the summer of 2023 that has currently captured the attention of the country’s headline writers. Boluarte, who denies all the allegations against her, has been accused of abandoning her post to have the surgery because she did not inform congress or delegate her powers during her almost two-week absence for an operation she has insisted was “essential” for her health, as she was constitutionally required to do. Last week, the plastic surgeon Mario Cabani cast doubt on that account, telling a local TV show that of the five procedures he carried out on Boluarte – including rhinoplasty, septoplasty, a procedure on the lower eyelids, and a fat graft on the nasolabial folds (smile lines) – all but one were aesthetic procedures.