Dr. Carlos Javier Carranza, one of Colombia's best-known plastic surgeons, has the kind of pitch that leaves one hoping his knife, at least, is not quite as blunt. ''Look at this guy, just look how ugly,'' he says, showing a picture of a young man with a bulbous nose and sagging cheeks at his grandly named clinic, the International Center for Plastic Surgery. Then the doctor points to the ''after'' picture and a smile crosses his face. ''Now this is a different man!'' Colombia prides itself on being a macho culture, a country of stoic landholders and Marxist guerrillas. It is a place where centuries ago the fabled El Dorado lured the hardiest of the Spanish conquistadors, men who would have had little care for deodorant, let alone a tummy tuck. But today Colombia like other countries in the region has its soft side, too, and its gathering obsessions with beauty. More and more men, young and old, here and across Latin America, are looking in the mirror and finding that they are not the fairest of them all.
