Enlazar y Soltar: Tramas en la Atención del VIH en Misiones, Argentina

This article, based on ethnographic research conducted in a public health program in Posadas, Misiones, Argentina (2024–2025), examines the sociopolitical tensions surrounding care for people living with HIV (PLHIV) in a context of structural crisis and underfunding of the healthcare system. Drawing from critical medical anthropology and care studies, the analysis reveals a matrix of conflict: relational efforts to bind ( enlazar ) patients contrast with institutional mechanisms that lead the system to release ( soltar ) of those who drift away. Practices of binding are sustained by healthcare workers and affective networks that take on the logistics of care. In contrast, releasing crystallizes in the operational category of “restart” ( reinicio ). This reveals how the lack of systematization in follow‐up functions as a biopolitical mechanism that externalizes the cost of care, delegating responsibility to the individual and reinforcing the fiction of the autonomous patient.