Dilación

In Chile, where healthcare is a neoliberal business, Dilación recounts my mother's wait for a heart transplant. An intimate and political story about illness, debt, and the violence of a system that commodifies bodies.

What is it like to wait for a heart?

In Chile, neoliberal policies have turned healthcare into a profitable business. Since the reforms imposed during the Pinochet dictatorship, promoted by the Chicago Boys, followers of Milton Friedman, the state has ceded prominence to the private sector, transforming healthcare and social security. Since then, the right to healthcare has been conceived under the logic of “choice”: an impoverished public system versus a profit-oriented private one. This division consolidated social segmentation: one healthcare system for the poor and another for the rich. Today, getting sick means facing debt, waiting, and financial transactions.

It is in this context that Dilación (Delay) was born, a photographic series that addresses my mother's illness (ICC) and her wait for a heart transplant, as well as the emotional and economic strain on the family of supporting someone with a degenerative disease in a territory fractured by neoliberalism. Waiting lists for heart transplants are merely an illusion that sustains a present that is disappearing. It is an intimate and political story that shows how waiting turns into violence and how sick bodies are expelled and forced to migrate in order to access a dignified life.